An Unsocial Socialist

Chapters XII - XVIII

CHAPTER XII

On the following Thursday Gertrude, Agatha, and Jane met for the
first time since they had parted at Alton College. Agatha was the
shyest of the three, and externally the least changed. She
fancied herself very different from the Agatha of Alton; but it
was her opinion of herself that had altered, not her person.
Expecting to find a corresponding alteration in her friends, she
had looked forward to the meeting with much doubt and little hope
of its proving pleasant.

She was more anxious about Gertrude than about Jane, concerning
whom, at a brief interview in London, she had already discovered
that Lady Brandon's manner, mind, and speech were just what Miss
Carpenter's had been. But, even from Agatha, Jane commanded more
respect than before, having changed from an overgrown girl into a
fine woman, and made a brilliant match in her first season,
whilst many of her pretty, proud, and clever contemporaries, whom
she had envied at school, were still unmarried, and were having
their homes made uncomfortable by parents anxious to get rid of
the burthen of supporting them, and to profit in purse or
position by their marriages.

This was Gertrude's case. Like Agatha, she had thrown away her
matrimonial opportunities. Proud of her rank and exclusiveness,
she had resolved to have as little as possible to do with persons
who did not share both with her. She began by repulsing the
proffered acquaintance of many families of great wealth and
fashion, who either did not know their grandparents or were
ashamed of them. Having shut herself out of their circle, she was
presented at court, and thenceforth accepted the invitations of
those only who had, in her opinion, a right to the same honor.
And she was far stricter on that point than the Lord Chamberlain,
who had, she held, betrayed his trust by practically turning
Leveller. She was well educated, refined in her manners and
habits, skilled in etiquette to an extent irritating to the
ignorant, and gifted with a delicate complexion, pearly teeth,
and a face that would have been Grecian but for a slight upward
tilt of the nose and traces of a square, heavy type in the jaw.
Her father was a retired admiral, with sufficient influence to
have had a sinecure made by a Conservative government expressly
for the maintenance of his son pending alliance with some
heiress. Yet Gertrude remained single, and the admiral, who had
formerly spent more money than he could comfortably afford on her
education, and was still doing so upon her state and personal
adornment, was complaining so unpleasantly of her failure to get
taken off his hands, that she could hardly bear to live at home,
and was ready to marry any thoroughbred gentleman, however
unsuitable his age or character, who would relieve her from her
humiliating dependence. She was prepared to sacrifice her natural
desire for youth, beauty, and virtue in a husband if she could
escape from her parents on no easier terms, but she was resolved
to die an old maid sooner than marry an upstart.

The difficulty in her way was pecuniary. The admiral was poor. He
had not quite six thousand a year, and though he practiced the
utmost economy in order to keep up the most expensive habits, he
could not afford to give his daughter a dowry. Now the well born
bachelors of her set, having more blue bood, but much less
wealth, than they needed, admired her, paid her compliments,
danced with her, but could not afford to marry her. Some of them
even told her so, married rich daughters of tea merchants, iron
founders, or successful stocktrokers, and then tried to make
matches between her and their lowly born brothers-in-law.

So, when Gertrude met Lady Brandon, her lot was secretly
wretched, and she was glad to accept an invitation to Brandon
Beeches in order to escape for a while from the admiral's daily
sarcasms on the marriage list in the "Times." The invitation was
the more acceptable because Sir Charles was no mushroom noble,
and, in the schooldays which Gertrude now remembered as the
happiest of her life, she had acknowledged that Jane's family and
connections were more aristocratic than those of any other
student then at Alton, herself excepted. To Agatha, whose
grandfather had amassed wealth as a proprietor of gasworks
(novelties in his time), she had never offered her intimacy.
Agatha had taken it by force, partly moral, partly physical. But
the gasworks were never forgotten, and when Lady Brandon
mentioned, as a piece of delightful news, that she had found out
their old school companion, and had asked her to join them,
Gertrude was not quite pleased. Yet, when they met, her eyes were
the only wet ones there, for she was the least happy of the
three, and, though she did not know it, her spirit was somewhat
broken. Agatha, she thought, had lost the bloom of girlhood, but
was bolder, stronger, and cleverer than before. Agatha had, in
fact, summoned all her self-possession to hide her shyness. She
detected the emotion of Gertrude, who at the last moment did not
try to conceal it. It would have been poured out freely in words,
had Gertrude's social training taught her to express her feelings
as well as it had accustomed her to dissemble them.

"Do you remember Miss Wilson?" said Jane, as the three drove from
the railway station to Brandon Beeches. "Do you remember Mrs.
Miller and her cat? Do you remember the Recording Angel? Do you
remember how I fell into the canal?"

These reminiscences lasted until they reached the house and went
together to Agatha's room. Here Jane, having some orders to give
in the household, had to leave themreluctantly; for she was
jealous lest Gertrude should get the start of her in the renewal
of Agatha's affection. She even tried to take her rival away with
her; but in vain. Gertrude would not budge.

"What a beautiful house and splendid place!" said Agatha when
Jane was gone. "And what a nice fellow Sir Charles is! We used to
laugh at Jane, but she can afford to laugh at the luckiest of us
now. I always said she would blunder into the best of everything.
Is it true that she married in her first season?"

"Yes. And Sir Charles is a man of great culture. I cannot
understand it. Her size is really beyond everything, and her
manners are bad."

"Hm!" said Agatha with a wise air. "There was always something
about Jane that attracted men. And she is more knave than fool.
But she is certainly a great ass."

Gertrude looked serious, to imply that she had grown out of the
habit of using or listening to such language. Agatha, stimulated
by this, continued:

"Here are you and I, who consider ourselves twice as presentable
and conversable as she, two old maids." Gertrude winced, and
Agatha hastened to add: "Why, as for you, you are perfectly
lovely! And she has asked us down expressly to marry us."

"She would not presume"

"Nonsense, my dear Gertrude. She thinks that we are a couple of
fools who have mismanaged our own business, and that she, having
managed so well for herself, can settle us in a jiffy. Come, did
she not say to you, before I came, that it was time for me to be
getting married?"

"Well, she did. But"

"She said exactly the same thing to me about yon when she invited
me."

"I would leave her house this moment," said Gertrude, "if I
thought she dared meddle in my affairs. What is it to her whether
I am married or not?"

"Where have you been living all these years, if you do not know
that the very first thing a woman wants to do when she has made a
good match is to make ones for all her spinster friends. Jane
does not mean any harm. She does it out of pure benevolence."

"I do not need Jane's benevolence."

"Neither do I; but it doesn't do any harm, and she is welcome to
amuse herself by trotting out her male acquaintances for my
approval. Hush! Here she comes."

Gertrude subsided. She could not quarrel with Lady Brandon
without leaving the house, and she could not leave the house
without returning to her home. But she privately resolved to
discourage the attentions of Erskine, suspecting that instead of
being in love with her as he pretended, he had merely been
recommended by Jane to marry her.

Chichester Erskine had made sketches in Palestine with Sir
Charles, and had tramped with him through many European picture
galleries. He was a young man of gentle birth, and had inherited
fifteen hundred a year from his mother, the bulk of the family
property being his elder brother's. Having no profession, and
being fond of books and pictures, he had devoted himself to fine
art, a pursuit which offered him on the cheapest terms a high
opinion of the beauty and capacity of his own nature. He had
published a tragedy entitled, "The Patriot Martyrs," with an
etched frontispiece by Sir Charles, and an edition of it had been
speedily disposed of in presentations to the friends of the
artist and poet, and to the reviews and newspapers. Sir Charles
had asked an eminent tragedian of his acquaintance to place the
work on the stage and to enact one of the patriot martyrs. But
the tragedian had objected that the other patriot martyrs had
parts of equal importance to that proposed for him. Erskine had
indignantly refused to cut these parts down or out, and so the
project had fallen through.

Since then Erskine had been bent on writing another drama,
without regard to the exigencies of the stage, but he had not yet
begun it, in consequence of his inspiration coming upon him at
inconvenient hours, chiefly late at night, when he had been
drinking, and had leisure for sonnets only. The morning air and
bicycle riding were fatal to the vein in which poetry struck him
as being worth writing. In spite of the bicycle, however, the
drama, which was to be entitled "Hypatia," was now in a fair way
to be written, for the poet had met and fallen in love with
Gertrude Lindsay, whose almost Grecian features, and some
knowledge of the different calculua which she had acquired at
Alton, helped him to believe that she was a fit model for his
heroine.

When the ladies came downstairs they found their host and Erskine
in the picture gallery, famous in the neighborhood for the sum it
had cost Sir Charles. There was a new etching to be admired, and
they were called on to observe what the baronet called its tones,
and what Agatha would have called its degrees of smudginess. Sir
Charles's attention often wandered from this work of art. He
looked at his watch twice, and said to his wife:

"I have ordered them to be punctual with the luncheon."

"Oh, yes; it's all right," said Lady Brandon, who had given
orders that luncheon was not to be served until the arrival of
another gentleman. "Show Agatha the picture of the man in the"

"Mr. Trefusis," said a servant.

Mr. Trefusis, still in snuff color, entered; coat unbuttoned and
attention unconstrained; exasperatingly unconscious of any
occasion for ceremony.

"Here you are at last," said Lady Brandon. "You know everybody,
don't you?"

"How do you do?" said Sir Charles, offering his hand as a severe
expression of his duty to his wife's guest, who took it
cordially, nodded to Erskine, looked without recognition at
Gertrude, whose frosty stillness repudiated Lady Brandon's
implication that the stranger was acquainted with her, and turned
to Agatha, to whom he bowed. She made no sign; she was paralyzed.
Lady Brandon reddened with anger. Sir Charles noted his guest's
reception with secret satisfaction, but shared the embarrassment
which oppressed all present except Trefusis, who seemed quite
indifferent and assured, and unconsciously produced an impression
that the others had not been equal to the occasion, as indeed
they had not.

"We were looking at some etchings when you came in," said Sir
Charles, hastening to break the silence. "Do you care for such
things?" And he handed him a proof.

Trefusis looked at it as if he had never seen such a thing before
and did not quite know what to make of it. "All these scratches
seem to me to have no meaning," he said dubiously.

Sir Charles stole a contemptuous smile and significant glance at
Erskine. He, seized already with an instinctive antipathy to
Trefusis, said emphatically:

"There is not one of those scratches that has not a meaning."

"That one, for instance, like the limb of a daddy-long-legs. What
does that mean?"

Erskine hesitated a moment; recovered himself; and said:
"Obviously enoughto me at leastit indicates the marking of
the roadway."

"Not a bit of it," said Trefusis. "There never was such a mark as
that on a road. It may be a very bad attempt at a briar, but
briars don't straggle into the middle of roads frequented as that
one seems to bejudging by those overdone ruts." He put the
etching away, showing no disposition to look further into the
portfolio, and remarked, "The only art that interests me is
photography."

Erskine and Sir Charles again exchanged glances, and the former
said:

"Photography is not an art in the sense in which I understand the
term. It is a process."

"And a much less troublesome and more perfect process than that,"
said Trefusis, pointing to the etching. "The artists are sticking
to the old barbarous, difficult, and imperfect processes of
etching and portrait painting merely to keep up the value of
their monopoly of the required skill. They have left the new,
more complexly organized, and more perfect, yet simple and
beautiful method of photography in the hands of tradesmen,
sneering at it publicly and resorting to its aid surreptitiously.
The result is that the tradesmen are becoming better artists than
they, and naturally so; for where, as in photography, the drawing
counts for nothing, the thought and judgment count for
everything; whereas in the etching and daubing processes, where
great manual skill is needed to produce anything that the eye can
endure, the execution counts for more than the thought, and if a
fellow only fit to carry bricks up a ladder or the like has
ambition and perseverance enough to train his hand and push into
the van, you cannot afford to put him back into his proper place,
because thoroughly trained hands are so scarce. Consider the
proof of this that you have in literature. Our books are manually
the work of printers and papermakers; you may cut an author's
hand off and he is as good an author as before. What is the
result? There is more imagination in any number of a penny
journal than in half-a-dozen of the Royal Academy rooms in the
season. No author can live by his work and be as empty-headed as
an average successful painter. Again, consider our implements of
musicour pianofortes, for example. Nobody but an acrobat will
voluntarily spend years at such a difficult mechanical puzzle as
the keyboard, and so we have to take our impressions of
Beethoven's sonatas from acrobats who vie with each other in the
rapidity of their prestos, or the staying power of their left
wrists. Thoughtful men will not spend their lives acquiring
sleight-of-hand. Invent a piano which will respond as delicately
to the turning of a handle as our present ones do to the pressure
of the fingers, and the acrobats will be driven back to their
carpets and trapezes, because the sole faculty necessary to the
executant musician will be the musical faculty, and no other will
enable him to obtain a hearing."

The company were somewhat overcome by this unexpected lecture.
Sir Charles, feeling that such views bore adversely on him, and
were somehow iconoclastic and low-lived, was about to make a
peevish retort, when Erskine forestalled him by asking Trefusis
what idea he had formed of the future of the arts. He replied
promptly. "Photography perfected in its recently discovered power
of reproducing color as well as form! Historical pictures
replaced by photographs of tableaux vivants formed and arranged
by trained actors and artists, and used chiefly for the
instruction of children. Nine-tenths of painting as we understand
it at present extinguished by the competition of these
photographs, and the remaining tenth only holding its own against
them by dint of extraordinary excellence! Our mistuned and
unplayable organs and pianofortes replaced by harmonious
instruments, as manageable as barrel organs! Works of fiction
superseded by interesting company and conversation, and made
obsolete by the human mind outgrowing the childishness that
delights in the tales told by grownup children such as novelists
and their like! An end to the silly confusion, under the one name
of Art, of the tomfoolery and make-believe of our play-hours with
the higher methods of teaching men to know themselves! Every
artist an amateur, and a consequent return to the healthy old
disposition to look on every man who makes art a means of
money-getting as a vagabond not to be entertained as an equal by
honest men!"

"In which case artists will starve, and there will be no more
art."

"Sir," said Trefusis, excited by the word, "I, as a Socialist,
can tell you that starvation is now impossible, except where, as
in England, masterless men are forcibly prevented from producing
the food they need. And you, as an artist, can tell me that at
present great artists invariably do starve, except when they are
kept alive by charity, private fortune, or some drudgery which
hinders them in the pursuit of their vocation."

"Oh!" said Erskine. "Then Socialists have some little sympathy
with artists after all."

"I fear," said Trefusis, repressing himself and speaking quietly
again, "that when a Socialist hears of a hundred pounds paid for
a drawing which Andrea del Sarto was glad to sell for tenpence,
his heart is not wrung with pity for the artist's imaginary loss
as that of a modern capitalist is. Yet that is the only way
nowadays of enlisting sympathy for the old masters. Frightful
disability, to be out of the reach of the dearest market when you
want to sell your drawings! But," he added, giving himself a
shake, and turning round gaily, "I did not come here to talk
shop. Sopending the delugelet us enjoy ourselves after our
manner."

"No," said Jane. "Please go on about Art. It's such a relief to
hear anyone talking sensibly about it. I hate etching. It makes
your eyes soreat least the acid gets into Sir Charles's, and
the difference between the first and second states is nothing but
imagination, except that the last state is worse than thehere's
luncheon!"

They went downstairs then. Trefusis sat between Agatha and Lady
Brandon, to whom he addressed all his conversation. They chatted
without much interruption from the business of the table; for
Jane, despite her amplitude, had a small appetite, and was
fearful of growing fat; whilst Trefusis was systematically
abstemious. Sir Charles was unusually silent. He was afraid to
talk about art, lest he should be contradicted by Trefusis, who,
he already felt, cared less and perhaps knew more about it than
he. Having previously commented to Agatha on the beauty of the
ripening spring, and inquired whether her journey had fatigued
her, he had said as much as he could think of at a first meeting.
For her part, she was intent on Trefusis, who, though he must
know, she thought, that they were all hostile to him except Jane,
seemed as confident now as when he had befooled her long ago.
That thought set her teeth on edge. She did not doubt the
sincerity of her antipathy to him even when she detected herself
in the act of protesting inwardly that she was not glad to meet
him again, and that she would not speak to him. Gertrude,
meanwhile, was giving short answers to Erskine and listening to
Trefusis. She had gathered from the domestic squabbles of the
last few days that Lady Brandon, against her husband's will, had
invited a notorious demagogue, the rich son of a successful
cotton-spinner, to visit the Beeches. She had made up her mind to
snub any such man. But on recognizing the long-forgotten Smilash,
she had been astonished, and had not known what to do. So, to
avoid doing anything improper, she had stood stilly silent and
done nothing, as the custom of English ladies in such cases is.
Subsequently, his unconscious self-assertion had wrought with her
as with the others, and her intention of snubbing him had faded
into the limbo of projects abandoned without trial. Erskine alone
was free from the influence of the intruder. He wished himself
elsewhere; but beside Gertrude the presence or absence of any
other person troubled him very little.

"How are the Janseniuses?" said Trefusis, suddenly turning to
Agatha.

"They are quite well, thank you," she said in measured tones.

"I met John Jansenius in the city lately. You know Jansenius?" he
added parenthetically to Sir Charles. "Cotman's bankthe last
Cotman died out of the firm before we were born. The Chairman of
the Transcanadian Railway Company."

"I know the name. I am seldom in the city."

"Naturally," assented Trefusis; "for who would sadden himself by
pushing his way through a crowd of such slaves, if he could help
it? I mean slaves of Mammon, of course. To run the gauntlet of
their faces in Cornhill is enough to discourage a thoughtful man
for hours. Well, Jansenius, being high in the court of Mammon, is
looking out for a good post in the household for his son.
Jansenius, by-the-bye is Miss Wylie's guardian and the father of
my late wife."

Agatha felt inclined to deny this; but, as it was true, she had
to forbear. Resolved to show that the relations between her
family and Trefusis were not cordial ones, she asked
deliberately, "Did Mr. Jansenius speak to you?"

Gertrude looked up, as if she thought this scarcely ladylike.

"Yes," said Trefusis. "We are the best friends in the worldas
good as possible, at any rate. He wanted me to subscribe to a
fund for relieving the poor at the east end of London by
assisting them to emigrate."

"I presume you subscribed liberally," said Erskine. "It was an
opportunity of doing some practical good."

"I did not," said Trefusis, grinning at the sarcasm. "This
Transcanadian Railway Company, having got a great deal of spare
land from the Canadian government for nothing, thought it would
be a good idea to settle British workmen on it and screw rent out
of them. Plenty of British workmen, supplanted in their
employment by machinery, or cheap foreign labor, or one thing or
another, were quite willing to go; but as they couldn't afford to
pay their passages to Canada, the Company appealed to the
benevolent to pay for them by subscription, as the change would
improve their miserable condition. I did not see why I should pay
to provide a rich company with tenant farmers, and I told
Jansenius so. He remarked that when money and not talk was
required, the workmen of England soon found out who were their
real friends."

"I know nothing about these questions," said Sir Charles, with an
air of conclusiveness; "but I see no objection to emigration" The
fact is," said Trefusis, "the idea of emigration is a dangerous
one for us. Familiarize the workman with it, and some day he may
come to see what a capital thing it would be to pack off me, and
you, with the peerage, and the whole tribe of unprofitable
proprietors such as we are, to St. Helena; making us a handsome
present of the island by way of indemnity! We are such a
restless, unhappy lot, that I doubt whether it would not prove a
good thing for us too. The workmen would lose nothing but the
contemplation of our elegant persons, exquisite manners, and
refined tastes. They might provide against that loss by picking
out a few of us to keep for ornament's sake. No nation with a
sense of beauty would banish Lady Brandon, or Miss Lindsay, or
Miss Wylie."

"Such nonsense!" said Jane.

"You would hardly believe how much I have spent in sending
workmen out of the country against my own view of the country's
interest," continued Trefusis, addressing Erskine. "When I make a
convert among the working classes, the first thing he does is to
make a speech somewhere declaring his new convictions. His
employer immediately discharges him'gives him the sack' is the
technical phrase. The sack is the sword of the capitalist, and
hunger keeps it sharp for him. His shield is the law, made for
the purpose by his own class. Thus equipped, he gives the worst
of it to my poor convert, who comes ruined to me for assistance.
As I cannot afford to pension him for life, I get rid of him by
assisting him to emigrate. Sometimes he prospers and repays me;
sometimes I hear no more of him; sometimes he comes back with his
habits unsettled. One man whom I sent to America made his
fortune, but he was not a social democrat; he was a clerk who had
embezzled, and who applied to me for assistance under the
impression that I considered it rather meritorious to rob the
till of a capitalist."

"He was a practical Socialist, in fact," said Erskine.

"On the contrary, he was a somewhat too grasping Individualist.
Howbeit, I enabled him to make good his defalcationin the city
they consider a defalcation made good when the money is
replacedand to go to New York. I recommended him not to go
there; but he knew better than I, for he made a fortune by
speculating with money that existed only in the imagination of
those with whom he dealt. He never repaid me; he is probably far
too good a man of business to pay money that cannot be extracted
from him by an appeal to the law or to his commercial credit. Mr.
Erskine," added Trefusis, lowering his voice, and turning to the
poet, "you are wrong to take part with hucksters and
money-hunters against your own nature, even though the attack
upon them is led by a man who prefers photography to etching."

He stopped,looked to Sir Charles for support, and then said
airily: "I don't doubt that you are quite right. I hate business
and men of business; and as to social questions, I have only one
article of belief, which is, that the sole refiner of human
nature is fine art."

"Whereas I believe that the sole refiner of art is human nature.
Art rises when men rise, and grovels when men grovel. What is
your opinion?"

"I agree with you in many ways," replied Sir Charles nervously;
for a lack of interest in his fellow-creatures, and an excess of
interest in himself, had prevented him from obtaining that power
of dealing with social questions which, he felt, a baronet ought
to possess, and he was consequently afraid to differ from anyone
who alluded to them with confidence. "If you take an interest in
art, I believe I can show you a few things worth seeing."

"Thank you. In return I will some day show you a remarkable
collection of photographs I possess; many of them taken by me. I
venture to think they will teach you something."

"No doubt," said Sir Charles. "Shall we return to the gallery? I
have a few treasures there that photography is not likely to
surpass for some time yet."

"Let's go through the conservatory," said Jane. "Don't you like
flowers, Mr. SmiI never can remember your proper name."

"Extremely," said Trefusis.

They rose and went out into a long hothouse. Here Lady Brandon,
finding Erskine at her side, and Sir Charles before her with
Gertrude, looked round for Trefusis, with whom she intended to
enjoy a trifling flirtation under cover of showing him the
flowers. He was out of sight; but she heard his footsteps in the
passage on the opposite side of the greenhouse. Agatha was also
invisible. Jane, not daring to rearrange their procession lest
her design should become obvious, had to walk on with Erskine.

Agatha had turned unintentionally into the opposite alley to that
which the others had chosen. When she saw what she had done, and
found herself virtually alone with Trefusis, who had followed
her, she blamed him for it, and was about to retrace her steps
when he said coolly:

"Were you shocked when you heard of Henrietta's sudden death?"

Agatha struggled with herself for a moment, and then said in a
suppressed voice: "How dare you speak to me?"

"Why not?" said he, astonished.

"I am not going to enter into a discussion with you. You know
what I mean very well."

"You mean that you are offended with me; that is plain enough.
But when I part with a young lady on good terms, and after a
lapse of years, during which we neither meet nor correspond, she
asks me how I dare speak to her, I am naturally startled."

"We did not part on good terms."

Trefusis stretched his eyebrows, as if to stretch his memory. "If
not," he said, "I have forgotten it, on my honor. When did we
part, and what happened? It cannot have been anything very
serious, or I should remember it."

His forgetfulness wounded Agatha. "No doubt you are well
accustomed to" She checked herself, and made a successful
snatch at her normal manner with gentlemen. "I scarcely remember
what it was, now that I begin to think. Some trifle, I suppose.
Do you like orchids?"

"They have nothing to do with our affairs at present. You are not
in earnest about the orchids, and you are trying to run away from
a mistake instead of clearing it up. That is a short-sighted
policy, always."

Agatha grew alarmed, for she felt his old influence over her
returning. "I do not wish to speak of it," she said firmly.

Her firmness was lost on him. "I do not even know what it means
yet," he said, "and I want to know, for I believe there is some
misunderstanding between us, and it is the trick of your sex to
perpetuate misunderstandings by forbidding all allusions to them.
Perhaps, leaving Lyvern so hastily, I forgot to fulfil some
promise, or to say farewell, or something of that sort. But do
you know how suddenly I was called away? I got a telegram to say
that Henrietta was dying, and I had only time to change my
clothesyou remember my disguiseand catch the express. And,
after all, she was dead when I arrived."

"I know that," said Agatha uneasily. "Please say no more about
it."

"Not if it distresses you. Just let me hope that you did not
suppose I blamed you for your share in the matter or that I told
the Janseniuses of it. I did not. Yes, I like orchids. A plant
that can subsist on a scrap of board is an instance of natural
econ"

"YOU blame ME!" cried Agatha. "_I_ never told the Janseniuses.
What would they have thought of you if I had?"

"Far worse of you than of me, however unjustly. You were the
immediate cause of the tragedy; I only the remote one. Jansenius
is not far-seeing when his feelings are touched. Few men are."

"I don't understand you in the least. What tragedy do you mean?"

"Henrietta's death. I call it a tragedy conventionally.
Seriously, of course, it was commonplace enough."

Agatha stopped and faced him. "What do you mean by what you said
just now? You said that I was the immediate cause of the tragedy,
and you say that you were talking of Henrietta'sof Henrietta. I
had nothing to do with her illness."

Trefusis looked at her as if considering whether he would go any
further. Then, watching her with the curiosity of a vivisector,
he said: "Strange to say, Agatha," (she shrank proudly at the
word), "Henrietta might have been alive now but for you. I am
very glad she is not; so you need not reproach yourself on my
account. She died of a journey she made to Lyvern in great
excitement and distress, and in intensely cold weather. You
caused her to make that journey by writing her a letter which
made her jealous."

"Do you mean to accuse me"

"No; stop!" he said hastily, the vivisecting spirit in him
exorcised by her shaking voice; "I accuse you of nothing. Why do
you not speak honestly to me when you are at your ease? If you
confess your real thoughts only under torture, who can resist the
temptation to torture you? One must charge you with homicide to
make you speak of anything but orchids."

But Agatha had drawn the new inference from the old facts, and
would not be talked out of repudiating it. "It was not my fault,"
she said. "It was yoursaltogether yours."

"Altogether," he assented, relieved to find her indignant instead
of remorseful.

She was not to be soothed by a verbal acquiescence. "Your
behavior was most unmanly, and I told you so, and you could not
deny it. You pretended that youYou pretended to have
feelingsYou tried to make me believe that Oh, I am a fool to
talk to you; you know perfectly well what I mean."

"Perfectly. I tried to make you believe that I was in love with
you. How do you know I was not?"

She disdained to answer; but as he waited calmly she said, "You
had no right to be."

"That does not prove that I was not. Come, Agatha, you pretended
to like me when you did not care two straws about me. You
confessed as much in that fatal letter, which I have somewhere at
home. It has a great rent right across it, and the mark of her
heel; she must have stamped on it in her rage, poor girl! So that
I can show your own hand for the very deception you accused
mewithout proofof having practiced on you."

"You are clever, and can twist things. What pleasure does it give
you to make me miserable?"

"Ha!" he exclaimed, in an abrupt, sardonic laugh. "I don't know;
you bewitch me, I think."

Agatha made no reply, but walked on quickly to the end of the
conservatory, where the others were waiting for them.

"Where have you been, and what have you been doing all this
time?" said Jane, as Trefusis came up, hurrying after Agatha. "I
don't know what you call it, but I call it perfectly
disgraceful!"

Sir Charles reddened at his wife's bad taste, and Trefusis
replied gravely: "We have been admiring the orchids, and talking
about them. Miss Wylie takes an interest in them."

CHAPTER XIII

One morning Gertrude got a letter from her father:

"My Dear Gerty: I have just received a bill for L110 from Madame
Smith for your dresses. May I ask you how long this sort of thing
is to go on? I need not tell you that I have not the means to
support you in such extravagance. I am, as you know, always
anxious that you should go about in a style worthy of your
position, but unless you can manage without calling on me to pay
away hundreds of pounds every season to Madame Smith, you had
better give up society and stay at home. I positively cannot
afford it. As far as I can see, going into society has not done
you much good. I had to raise L500 last month on Franklands; and
it is too bad if I must raise more to pay your dressmaker. You
might at least employ some civil person, or one whose charges are
moderate. Madame Smith tells me that she will not wait any
longer, and charges L50 for a single dress. I hope you fully
understand that there must be an end to this.

"I hear from your mother that young Erskine is with you at
Brandon's. I do not think much of him. He is not well off, nor
likely to get on, as he has taken to poetry and so forth. I am
told also that a man named Trefusis visits at the Beeches a good
deal now. He must be a fool, for he contested the last Birmingham
election, and came out at the foot of the poll with thirty-two
votes through calling himself a Social Democrat or some such
foreign rubbish, instead of saying out like a man that he was a
Radical. I suppose the name stuck in his throat, for his mother
was one of the Howards of Breconcastle; so he has good blood in
him, though his father was nobody. I wish he had your bills to
pay; he could buy and sell me ten times over, after all my
twenty-five years' service.

"As I am thinking of getting something done to the house, I had
rather you did not come back this month, if you can possibly hold
on at Brandon's. Remember me to him, and give our kind regards to
his wife. I should be obliged if you would gather some hemlock
leaves and send them to me. I want them for my ointment; the
stuff the chemists sell is no good. Your mother's eyes are bad
again; and your brother Berkeley has been gambling, and seems to
think I ought to pay his debts for him. I am greatly worried over
it all, and I hope that, until you have settled yourself, you
will be more reasonable, and not run these everlasting bills upon
me. You are enjoying yourself out of reach of all the
unpleasantness; but it bears hardly upon

"Your affectionate father, "C.B. LINDSAY."

A faint sketch of the lines Time intended to engrave on
Gertrude's brow appeared there as she read the letter; but she
hastened to give the admiral's kind regards to her host and
hostess, and discussed her mother's health feelingly with them.
After breakfast she went to the library, and wrote her reply:

"BRANDON BEECHES, "Tuesday.

"Dear Papa: Considering that it is more than three years since
you paid Madame Smith last, and that then her bill, which
included my court dress, was only L150, I cannot see how I could
possibly have been more economical, unless you expect me to go in
rags. I am sorry that Madame Smith has asked for the money at
such an inconvenient time, but when I begged you to pay her
something in March last year you told me to keep her quiet by
giving her a good order. I am not surprised at her not being very
civil, as she has plenty of tradesmen's daughters among her
customers who pay her more than L300 a year for their dresses. I
am wearing a skirt at present which I got two years ago.

"Sir Charles is going to town on Thursday; he will bring you the
hemlock. Tell mamma that there is an old woman here who knows
some wonderful cure for sore eyes. She will not tell what the
ingredients are, but it cures everyone, and there is no use in
giving an oculist two guineas for telling us that reading in bed
is bad for the eyes, when we know perfectly well that mamma will
not give up doing it. If you pay Berkeley's debts, do not forget
that he owes me L3.

"Another schoolfellow of mine is staying here now, and I think
that Mr. Trefusis will have the pleasure of paying her bills some
day. He is a great pet of Lady Brandon's. Sir Charles was angry
at first because she invited him here, and we were al1 surprised
at it. The man has a bad reputation, and headed a mob that threw
down the walls of the park; and we hardly thought he would be
cool enough to come after that. But he does not seem to care
whether we want him or not; and he comes when he likes. As he
talks cleverly, we find him a godsend in this dull place. It is
really not such a paradise as you seem to think, but you need not
be afraid of my returning any sooner than I can help.

"Your affectionate daughter, "Gertrude Lindsay.

When Gertrude had closed this letter, and torn up her father's,
she thought little more about either. They might have made her
unhappy had they found her happy, but as hopeless discontent was
her normal state, and enjoyment but a rare accident,
recriminatory passages with her father only put her into a bad
humor, and did not in the least disappoint or humiliate her.

For the sake of exercise, she resolved to carry her letter to the
village post office and return along the Riverside Road, whereby
she had seen hemlock growing. She took care to go out unobserved,
lest Agatha should volunteer to walk with her, or Jane declare
her intention of driving to the post office in the afternoon, and
sulk for the rest of the day unless the trip to the village were
postponed until then. She took with her, as a protection against
tramps, a big St. Bernard dog named Max. This animal, which was
young and enthusiastic, had taken a strong fancy to her, and had
expressed it frankly and boisterously; and she, whose affections
had been starved in her home and in society, had encouraged him
with more kindness than she had ever shown to any human being.

In the village, having posted her letter, she turned towards a
lane that led to the Riverside Road. Max, unaware of her reason
for choosing the longest way home, remonstrated by halting in the
middle of the lane, wagging his tail rapidly, and uttering gruff
barks.

Max, apparently understanding, rushed after her, passed her, and
disappeared in a cloud of dust raised by his effort to check
himself when he had left her far enough behind. When he came back
she kissed his nose, and ran a race with him until she too was
panting, and had to stand still to recover her breath, whilst he
bounded about, barking ferociously. She had not for many years
enjoyed such a frolic, and the thought of this presently brought
tears to her eyes. Rather peevishly she bade Max be quiet, walked
slowly to cool herself, and put up her sunshade to avert
freckles.

The sun was now at the meridian. On a slope to Gertrude's right
hand, Sallust's House, with its cinnamon-colored walls and yellow
frieze, gave a foreign air to the otherwise very English
landscape. She passed by without remembering who lived there.
Further down, on some waste land separated from the road by a dry
ditch and a low mud wall, a cluster of hemlocks, nearly six feet
high, poisoned the air with their odor. She crossed the ditch,
took a pair of gardening gloves from her plaited straw
hand-basket, and busied herself with the hemlock leaves, pulling
the tender ones, separating them from the stalk, and filling the
basket with the web. She forgot Max until an impression of dead
silence, as if the earth had stopped, caused her to look round in
vague dread. Trefusis, with his hand abandoned to the dog, who
was trying how much of it he could cram into his mouth, was
standing within a few yards of her, watching her intently.
Gertrude turned pale, and came out hastily from among the bushes.
Then she had a strange sensation as if something had happened
high above her head. There was a threatening growl, a commanding
exclamation, and an unaccountable pause, at the expiration of
which she found herself supine on the sward, with her parasol
between her eyes and the sun. A sudden scoop of Max's wet warm
tongue in her right ear startled her into activity. She sat up,
and saw Trefusis on his knees at her side holding the parasol
with an unconcerned expression, whilst Max was snuffing at her in
restless anxiety opposite.

"I must go home," she said. "I must go home instantly."

"Not at all," said Trefusis, soothingly. "They have just sent
word to say that everything is settled satisfactorily and that
you need not come."

"Have they?" she said faintly. Then she lay down again, and it
seemed to her that a very long time elapsed. Suddenly
recollecting that Trefusis had supported her gently with his hand
to prevent her falling back too rudely, she rose again, and this
time got upon her feet with his help.

"I must go home," she said again. "It is a matter of life or
death."

"No, no," he said softly. "It is all right. You may depend on
me."

She looked at him earnestly. He had taken her hand to steady her,
for she was swaying a little. "Are you sure," she said, grasping
his arm. "Are you quite sure?"

"Absolutely certain. You know I am always right, do you not?"

"Yes, oh, yes; you have always been true to me. You" Here her
senses came back with a rush. Dropping his hand as if it had
become red hot, she said sharply, "What are you talking about?"

"I don't know," he said, resuming his indifferent manner with a
laugh. "Are you better? Let me drive you to the Beeches. My
stable is within a stone's throw; I can get a trap out in ten
minutes."

"No, thank you," said Gertrude haughtily. "I do not wish to
drive." She paused, and added in some bewilderment, "What has
happened?"

"You fainted, and"

"I did not faint," said Gertrude indignantly. "I never fainted in
my life."

"Yes, you did."

"Pardon me, Mr. Trefusis. I did not."

"You shall judge for yourself. I was coming through this field
when I saw you gathering hemlock. Hemlock is interesting on
account of Socrates, and you were interesting as a young lady
gathering poison. So I stopped to look on. Presently you came out
from among the bushes as if you had seen a snake there. Then you
fell into my armswhich led me to suppose that you had
faintedand Max, concluding that it was all my fault, nearly
sprang at my throat. You were overpowered by the scent of the
water-hemlock, which you must have been inhaling for ten minutes
or more."

"I did not know that there was any danger," said Gertrude,
crestfallen. "I felt very tired when I came to. That was why I
lay so long the second time. I really could not help it."

"You did not lie very long."

"Not when I first fell; that was only a few seconds, I know. But
I must have lain there nearly ten minutes after I recovered."

"You were nearly a minute insensible when you first fell, and
when you recovered you only rested for about one second. After
that you raved, and I invented suitable answers until you
suddenly asked me what I was talking about."

Gertrude reddened a little as the possibility of her having raved
indiscreetly occurred to her. "It was very silly of me to faint,"
she said.

"You could not help it; you are only human. I shall walk with you
to the Beeches."

"Thank you; I will not trouble you," she said quickly.

He shook his head. "I do not know how long the effect of that
abominable water-weed may last," he said, "and I dare not leave
you to walk alone. If you prefer it I can send you in a trap with
my gardener, but I had rather accompany you myself."

"You are giving yourself a great deal of unnecessary trouble. I
will walk. I am quite well again and need no assistance."

They started without another word. Gertrude had to concentrate
all her energy to conceal from him that she was giddy. Numbness
and lassitude crept upon her, and she was beginning to hope that
she was only dreaming it all when he roused her by saying,

"Take my arm."

"No, thank you."

"Do not be so senselessly obstinate. You will have to lean on the
hedge for support if you refuse my help. I am sorry I did not
insist on getting the trap."

Gertrude had not been spoken to in this tone since her childhood.
"I am perfectly well," she said sharply. "You are really very
officious."

"You are not perfectly well, and you know it. However, if you
make a brave struggle, you will probably be able to walk home
without my assistance, and the effort may do you good."

"You are very rude," she said peremptorily.

"I know it," he replied calmly. "You will find three classes of
men polite to youslaves, men who think much of their manners
and nothing of you, and your lovers. I am none of these, and
therefore give you back your ill manners with interest. Why do
you resist your good angel by suppressing those natural and
sincere impulses which come to you often enough, and sometimes
bring a look into your face that might tame a beara look which
you hasten to extinguish as a thief darkens his lantern at the
sound of a footstep."

"Mr. Trefusis, I am not accustomed to be lectured."

"That is why I lecture you. I felt curious to see how your good
breeding, by which I think you set some store, would serve you in
entirely novel circumstancesthose of a man speaking his mind to
you, for instance. What is the result of my experiment? Instead
of rebuking me with the sweetness and dignity which I could not,
in spite of my past observation, help expecting from you, you
churlishly repel my offer of the assistance you need, tell me
that I am very rude, very officious, and, in short, do what you
can to make my position disagreeable and humiliating."

She looked at him haughtily, but his expression was void of
offence or fear, and he continued, unanswered.

"I would bear all this from a working woman without remonstrance,
for she would owe me no graces of manner or morals. But you are a
lady. That means that many have starved and drudged in uncleanly
discomfort in order that you may have white and unbroken hands,
fine garments, and exquisite mannersthat you may be a living
fountain of those influences that soften our natures and lives.
When such a costly thing as a lady breaks down at the first touch
of a firm hand, I feel justified in complaining."

Gertrude walked on quickly, and said between her teeth, "I don't
want to hear any of your absurd views, Mr. Trefusis."

He laughed. "My unfortunate views!" he said. "Whenever I make an
inconvenient remark it is always set aside as an expression of
certain dangerous crazes with which I am supposed to be
afflicted. When I point out to Sir Charles that one of his
favorite artists has not accurately observed something before
attempting to draw it, he replies, 'You know our views differ on
these things, Trefusis.' When I told Miss Wylie's guardian that
his emigration scheme was little better than a fraud, he said,
'You must excuse me, but I cannot enter into your peculiar
views.' One of my views at present is that Miss Lindsay is more
amiable under the influence of hemlock than under that of the
social system which has made her so unhappy."

"Well!" exclaimed Gertrude, outraged. Then, after a pause, "I was
under the impression that I had accepted the escort of a
gentleman." Then, after another pause, Trefusis being quite
undisturbed, "How do you know that I am unhappy?"

"By a certain defect in your countenance, which lacks the
crowning beauty of happiness; and a certain defect in your voice
which will never disappear until you learn to love or pity those
to whom you speak."

"You are wrong," said Gertrude, with calm disdain. "You do not
understand me in the least. I am particularly attached to my
friends."

"Then I have never seen you in their company."

"You are still wrong."

"Then how can you speak as you do, look as you do, act as you
do?"

"What do you mean? HOW do I look and act?"

"Like one of the railings of Belgrave Square, cursed with
consciousness of itself, fears of the judgment of the other
railings, and doubts of their fitness to stand in the same row
with it. You are cold, mistrustful, cruel to nervous or clumsy
people, and more afraid of the criticisms of those with whom you
dance and dine than of your conscience. All of which prevents you
from looking like an angel."

"Thank you. Do you consider paying compliments the perfection of
gentlemanly behavior?"

"Have I been paying you many? That last remark of mine was not
meant as one. On my honor, the angels will not disappoint me if
they are no lovelier than you should be if you had that look in
your face and that tone in your voice I spoke of just now. It can
hardly displease you to hear that. If I were particularly
handsome myself, I should like to be told so."

"I am sorry I cannot tell you so."

"Oh! Ha! ha! What a retort, Miss Lindsay! You are not sorry
either; you are rather glad."

Gertrude knew it, and was angry with herself, not because her
retort was false, but because she thought it unladylike. "You
have no right to annoy me," she exclaimed, in spite of herself.

"None whatever," he said, humbly. " If I have done so, forgive me
before we part. I will go no further with you; Max will give the
alarm if you faint in the avenue, which I don't think you are
likely to do, as you have forgotten all about the hemlock."

"Oh, how maddening!" she cried. "I have left my basket behind."

"Never mind; I will find it and have it filled and sent to you."

"Thank you. I am sorry to trouble you."

"Not at all. I hope you do not want the hemlock to help you to
get rid of the burden of life."

"Nonsense. I want it for my father, who uses it for medicine."

"I will bring it myself to-morrow. Is that soon enough?"

"Quite. I am in no hurry. Thank you, Mr. Trefusis. Good-bye."

She gave him her hand, and even smiled a little, and then hurried
away. He stood watching her as she passed along the avenue under
the beeches. Once, when she came into a band of sunlight at a gap
in the trees, she made so pretty a figure in her spring dress of
violet and white that his eyes kindled as he gazed. He took out
his note-book, and entered her name and the date, with a brief
memorandum.

"I have thawed her," he said to himself as he put up his book.
"She shall learn a lesson or two to hand on to her children
before I have done with her. A trifle underbred, too, or she
would not insist so much on her breeding. Henrietta used to wear
a dress like that. I am glad to see that there is no danger of
her taking to me personally."

He turned away, and saw a crone passing, bending beneath a bundle
of sticks. He eyed it curiously; and she scowled at him and
hurried on.

"Hallo," he said.

She continued for a few steps, but her courage failed her and she
stopped.

"You are Mrs. Hickling, I think?"

"Yes, please your worship."

"You are the woman who carried away an old wooden gate that lay
on Sir Charles Brandon's land last winter and used it for
firewood. You were imprisoned for seven days for it."

"You may send me there again if you like," she retorted, in a
cracked voice, as she turned at bay. "But the Lord will make me
even with you some day. Cursed be them that oppress the poor and
needy; it is one of the seven deadly sins."

"Those green laths on your back are the remainder of my garden
gate," he said. "You took the first half last Saturday. Next time
you want fuel come to the house and ask for coals, and let my
gates alone. I suppose you can enjoy a fire without stealing the
combustibles. Stow

256 pay me for my gate by telling me something I want to know."

"And a kind gentleman too, sir; blessings."

"What is the hemlock good for?"

"The hemlock, kind gentleman? For the evil, sir, to be sure."

"Scrofulous ulcers!" he exclaimed, recoiling. "The father of that
beautiful girl!" He turned homeward, and trudged along with his
head bent, muttering, "All rotten to the bone. Oh, civilization!
civilization! civilization!"

CHAPTER XIV

"What has come over Gertrude?" said Agatha one day to Lady
Brandon.

"Why? Is anything the matter with her?"

"I don't know; she has not been the same since she poisoned
herself. And why did she not tell about it? But for Trefusis we
should never have known."

"Gertrude always made secrets of things."

"She was in a vile temper for two days after; and now she is
quite changed. She falls into long reveries, and does not hear a
word of what is going on around. Then she starts into life again,
and begs your pardon with the greatest sweetness for not catching
what you have said."

"I hate her when she is polite; it is not natural to her. As to
her going to sleep, that is the effect of the hemlock. We know a
man who took a spoonful of strychnine in a bath, and he never was
the same afterwards."

"I think she is making up her mind to encourage Erskine," said
Agatha. "When I came here he hardly dared speak to herat least,
she always snubbed him. Now she lets him talk as much as he
likes, and actually sends him on messages and allows him to carry
things for her."

"Yes. I never saw anybody like Gertrude in my life. In London, if
men were attentive to her, she sat on them for being officious;
and if they let her alone she was angry at being neglected.
Erskine is quite good enough for her, I think."
Here Erskine appeared at the door and looked round the room.

"She's not here," said Jane.

"I am seeking Sir Charles," he said, withdrawing somewhat
stiffly.

"What a lie!" said Jane, discomfited by his reception of her
jest. "He was talking to Sir Charles ten minutes ago in the
billiard room. Men are such conceited fools!"

Agatha had strolled to the window, and was looking discontentedly
at the prospect, as she had often done at school when alone, and
sometimes did now in society. The door opened again, and Sir
Charles appeared. He, too, looked round, but when his roving
glance reached Agatha, it cast anchor; and he came in.

"Are you busy just now, Miss Wylie?" he asked.

"Yes," said Jane hastily. "She is going to write a letter for
me."

"Really, Jane," he said, "I think you are old enough to write
your letters without troubling Miss Wylie."

"When I do write my own letters you always find fault with them,"
she retorted.

"I thought perhaps you might have leisure to try over a duet with
me," he said, turning to Agatha.

"Certainly," she replied, hoping to smooth matters by humoring
him. "The letter will do any time before post hour."

Jane reddened, and said shortly, "I will write it myself, if you
will not."

Sir Charles quite lost his temper. "How can you be so damnably
rude?" he said, turning upon his wife. "What objection have you
to my singing duets with Miss Wylie?"

"Nice language that!" said Jane. "I never said I objected; and
you have no right to drag her away to the piano just when she is
going to write a letter for me."

"I do not wish Miss Wylie to do anything except what pleases her
best. It seems to me that writing letters to your tradespeople
cannot be a very pleasant occupation."

"Pray don't mind me," said Agatha. "It is not the least trouble
to me. I used to write all Jane's letters for her at school.
Suppose I write the letter first, and then we can have the duet.
You will not mind waiting five minutes?"

"I can wait as long as you please, of course. But it seems such
an absurd abuse of your good nature that I cannot help protest!"

"Oh, let it wait!" exclaimed Jane. "Such a ridiculous fuss to
make about asking Agatha to write a letter, just because you
happen to want her to play you your duets! I am certain she is
heartily sick and tired of them."

Agatha, to escape the altercation, went to the library and wrote
the letter. When she returned to the drawing-room, she found no
one there; but Sir Charles came in presently.

"I am so sorry, Miss Wylie," he said, as he opened the piano for
her, "that you should be incommoded because my wife is silly
enough to be jealous."

"Jealous!"

"Of course. Idiocy!"

"Oh, you are mistaken," said Agatha, incredulously. "How could
she possibly be jealous of me?"

"She is jealous of everybody and everything," he replied
bitterly, "and she cares for nobody and for nothing. You do not
know what I have to endure sometimes from her."

Agatha thought her most discreet course was to sit down
immediately and begin "I would that my love." Whilst she played
and sang, she thought over what Sir Charles had just let slip.
She had found him a pleasant companion, light-hearted, fond of
music and fun, polite and considerate, appreciative of her
talents, quick-witted without being oppressively clever, and, as
a married man, disinterested in his attentions. But it now
occurred to her that perhaps they had been a good deal together
of late.

Sir Charles had by this time wandered from his part into hers;
and he now recalled her to the music by stopping to ask whether
he was right. Knowing by experience what his difficulty was
likely to be, she gave him his note and went on. They had not
been singing long when Jane came back and sat down, expressing a
hope that her presence would not disturb them. It did disturb
them. Agatha suspected that she had come there to watch them, and
Sir Charles knew it. Besides, Lady Brandon, even when her mind
was tranquil, was habitually restless. She could not speak
because of the music, and, though she held an open book in her
hand, she could not read and watch simultaneously. She gaped, and
leaned to one end of the sofa until, on the point of
overbalancing' she recovered herself with a prodigious bounce.
The floor vibrated at her every movement. At last she could keep
silence no longer.

"Oh, dear!" she said, yawning audibly. "It must be five o'clock
at the very earliest."

Agatha turned round upon the piano-stool, feeling that music and
Lady Brandon were incompatible. Sir Charles, for his guest's
sake, tried hard to restrain his exasperation.

"Probably your watch will tell you," he said.

"Thank you for nothing," said Jane. "Agatha, where is Gertrude?"

"How can Miss Wylie possibly tell you where she is, Jane? I think
you have gone mad to-day."

"She is most likely playing billiards with Mr. Erskine," said
Agatha, interposing quickly to forestall a retort from Jane, with
its usual sequel of a domestic squabble.

"I think it is very strange of Gertrude to pass the whole day
with Chester in the billiard room," said Jane discontentedly.

"There is not the slightest impropriety in her doing so," said
Sir Charles. "If our hospitality does not place Miss Lindsay
above suspicion, the more shame for us. How would you feel if
anyone else made such a remark ?"

"Oh, stuff!" said Jane peevishly. "You are always preaching long
rigmaroles about nothing at all. I did not say there was any
impropriety about Gertrude. She is too proper to be pleasant, in
my opinion."

Sir Charles, unable to trust himself further, frowned and left
the room, Jane speeding him with a contemptuous laugh.

"Don't ever be such a fool as to get married," she said, when he
was gone. She looked up as she spoke, and was alarmed to see
Agatha seated on the pianoforte, with her ankles swinging in the
old school fashion.

"Jane," she said, surveying her hostess coolly, "do you know what
I would do if I were Sir Charles?"

Jane did not know.

"I would get a big stick, beat you black and blue, and then lock
you up on bread and water for a week."

Jane half rose, red and angry. "Whwhy?" she said, relapsing
upon the sofa.

"If I were a man, I would not, for mere chivalry's sake, let a
woman treat me like a troublesome dog. You want a sound
thrashing."

"I'd like to see anybody thrash me," said Jane, rising again and
displaying her formidable person erect. Then she burst into
tears, and said, "I won't have such things said to me in my own
house. How dare you?"

"You deserve it for being jealous of me," said Agatha.

Jane's eyes dilated angrily. "I!I!jealous of you!" She looked
round, as if for a missile. Not finding one, she sat down again,
and said in a voice stifled with tears, "JJealous of YOU,
indeed!"

"You have good reason to be, for he is fonder of me than of you."

Jane opened her mouth and eyes convulsively, but only uttered a
gasp, and Agatha proceeded calmly, "I am polite to him, which you
never are. When he speaks to me I allow him to finish his
sentence without expressing, as you do, a foregone conclusion
that it is not worth attending to. I do not yawn and talk whilst
he is singing. When he converses with me on art or literature,
about which he knows twice as much as I do, and at least ten
times as much as you" (Jane gasped again) "I do not make a silly
answer and turn to my neighbor at the other side with a remark
about the tables or the weather. When he is willing to be
pleased, as he always is, I am willing to be pleasant. And that
is why he likes me."

"He does NOT like you. He is the same to everyone."

"Except his wife. He likes me so much that you, like a great
goose as you are, came up here to watch us at our duets, and made
yourself as disagreeable as you possibly could whilst I was
making myself charming. The poor man was ashamed of you."

"He wasn't," said Jane, sobbing. "I didn't do anything. I didn't
say anything. I won't bear it. I will get a divorce. I will"

"You will mend your ways if you have any sense left," said Agatha
remorselessly. "Do not make such a noise, or someone will come to
see what is the matter, and I shall have to get down from the
piano, where I am very comfortable."

"It is you who are jealous."

"Oh, is it, Jane? I have not allowed Sir Charles to fall in love
with me yet, but I can do so very easily. What will you wager
that he will not kiss me before to-morrow evening?"

"It will be very mean and nasty of you if he does. You seem to
think that I can be treated like a child."

"So you are a child," said Agatha, descending from her perch and
preparing to go. "An occasional slapping does you good."

"It is nothing to you whether I agree with my husband or not,"
said Jane with sudden fierceness.

"Not if you quarrel with him in private, as wellbred couples do.
But when it occurs in my presence it makes me uncomfortable, and
I object to being made uncomfortable."

"You would not be here at all if I had not asked you."

"Just think how dull the house would be without me, Jane!"

"Indeed! It was not dull before you came. Gertrude always behaved
like a lady, at least."

"I am sorry that her example was so utterly lost on you."

"I won't bear it," said Jane with a sob and a plunge upon the
sofa that made the lustres of the chandeliers rattle. "I wouldn't
have asked you if I had thought you could be so hateful. I will
never ask you again."

"I will make Sir Charles divorce you for incompatibility of
temper and marry me. Then I shall have the place to myself."

Agatha laughed. "Come," she said good-humoredly, "don't be an old
ass, Jane. Wash your face before anyone sees it, and remember
what I have told you about Sir Charles."

"It is very hard to be called an ass in one's own house."

"It is harder to be treated as one, like your husband. I am going
to look for him in the billiard room."

Jane ran after her, and caught her by the sleeve.

"Agatha," she pleaded, "promise me that you won't be mean. Say
that you won't make love to him."

"I will consider about it," replied Agatha gravely.

Jane uttered a groan and sank into a chair, which creaked at the
shock. Agatha turned on the threshold, and seeing her shaking her
head, pressing her eyes, and tapping with her heel in a
restrained frenzy, said quickly,

"Here are the Waltons, and the Fitzgeorges, and Mr. Trefusis
coming upstairs. How do you do, Mrs. Walton? Lady Brandon will be
SO glad to see you. Good-evening, Mr. Fitzgeorge."

Jane sprang up, wiped her eyes, and, with her hands on her hair,
smoothing it, rushed to a mirror. No visitors appearing, she
perceived that she was, for perhaps the hundredth time in her
life, the victim of an imposture devised by Agatha. She,
gratified by the success of her attempt to regain her old
ascendancy over Janeshe had made it with misgiving,
notwithstanding her apparent confidencewent downstairs to the
library, where she found Sir Charles gloomily trying to drown his
domestic troubles in art criticism.

"I thought you were in the billiard room," said Agatha.

"I only peeped in," he replied; "but as I saw something
particular going on, I thought it best to slip away, and I have
been alone ever since."

The something particular which Sir Charles had not wished to
interrupt was only a game of billiards.

It was the first opportunity Erskine had ever enjoyed of speaking
to Gertrude at leisure and alone. Yet their conversation had
never been so commonplace. She, liking the game, played very well
and chatted indifferently; he played badly, and broached trivial
topics in spite of himself. After an hour-and-a-half's play,
Gertrude had announced that this game must be their last. He
thought desperately that if he were to miss many more strokes the
game must presently end, and an opportunity which might never
recur pass beyond recall. He determined to tell her without
preface that he adored her, but when he opened his lips a
question came forth of its own accord relating to the Persian way
of playing billiards. Gertrude had never been in Persia, but had
seen some Eastern billiard cues in the India museum. Were not the
Hindoos wonderful people for filigree work, and carpets, and such
things? Did he not think thc crookedness of their carpet patterns
a blemish? Some people pretended to admire them, but was not that
all nonsense? Was not the modern polished floor, with a rug in
the middle, much superior to the old carpet fitted into the
corners of the room? Yes. Enormously superior. Immensely

"Why, what are you thinking of to-day, Mr. Erskine? You have
played with my ball."

"I am thinking of you."

"What did you say?" said Gertrude, not catching the serious turn
he had given to the conversation, and poising her cue for a
stroke. "Oh! I am as bad as you; that was the worst stroke I ever
made, I think. I beg your pardon; you said something just now."

"I forget. Nothing of any consequence." And he groaned at his own
cowardice.

"Suppose we stop," she said. "There is no use in finishing the
game if our hands are out. I am rather tired of it."

"Certainlyif you wish it"

"I will finish if you like."

"Not at all. What pleases you, pleases me."

Gertrude made him a little bow, and idly knocked the balls about
with her cue. Erskine's eyes wandered, and his lip moved
irresolutely. He had settled with himself that his declaration
should be a frank oneheart to heart. He had pictured himself in
the act of taking her hand delicately, and saying, "Gertrude, I
love you. May I tell you so again?" But this scheme did not now
seem practicable.

"Miss Lindsay."

Gertrude, bending over the table, looked up in alarm.

"The present is as good an opportunity as I willas I shallas
I will."

Gertrude went to the other side of the table in pursuit of a
ball. She now guessed what was coming, and was willing that it
should come; not because she intended to accept, but because,
like other young ladies experienced in such scenes, she counted
the proposals of marriage she received as a Red Indian counts the
scalps he takes.

"We have had a very pleasant time of it here," he said, giving up
as inexplicable the relevance of the doctrine of necessity. "At
least, I have."

"Well," said Gertrude, quick to resent a fancied allusion to her
private discontent, "so have I."

"I am glad of thatmore so than I can convey by words."

"Is it any business of yours?" she said, following the
disagreeable vein he had unconsciously struck upon, and
suspecting pity in his efforts to be sympathetic.

"I wish I dared hope so. The happiness of my visit has been due
to you entirely."

"Indeed," said Gertrude, wincing as all the hard things Trefusis
had told her of herself came into her mind at the heels of
Erskine's unfortunate allusion to her power of enjoying herself.

"I hope I am not paining you," he said earnestly.

"I don't know what you are talking about," she said, standing
erect with sudden impatience. "You seem to think that it is very
easy to pain me."

"No," he said timidly, puzzled by the effect he had produced. "I
fear you misunderstand me. I am very awkward. Perhaps I had
better say no more, Gertrude, by turning away to put up her cue,
signified that that was a point for him to consider; she not
intending to trouble herself about it. When she faced him again,
he was motionless and dejected, with a wistful expression like
that of a dog that has proffered a caress and received a kick.
Remorse, and a vague sense that there was something base in her
attitude towards him, overcame her. She looked at him for an
instant and left the room.

The look excited him. He did not understand it, nor attempt to
understand it; but it was a look that he had never before seen in
her face or in that of any other woman. It struck him as a
momentary revelation of what he had written of in "The Patriot
Martyrs" as

"The glorious mystery of a woman's heart,"

and it made him feel unfit for ordinary social intercourse. He
hastened from the house, walked swiftly down the avenue to the
lodge, where he kept his bicycle, left word there that he was
going for an excursion and should probably not return in time for
dinner, mounted, and sped away recklessly along the Riverside
Road. In less than two minutes he passed the gate of Sallust's
House, where he nearly ran over an old woman laden with a basket
of coals, who put down her burthen to scream curses after him.
Warned by this that his headlong pace was dangerous, he slackened
it a little, and presently saw Trefusis lying prone on the river
bank, with his cheeks propped on his elbows, reading intently.
Erskine, who had presented him, a few days before, with a copy of
"The Patriot Martyrs and other Poems," tried to catch a glimpse
of the book over which Trefusis was so serious. It was a Blue
Book, full of figures. Erskine rode on in disgust, consoling
himself with the recollection of Gertrude's face.

The highway now swerved inland from the river, and rose to a
steep acclivity, at the brow of which he turned and looked back.
The light was growing ruddy, and the shadows were lengthening.
Trefusis was still prostrate in the meadow, and the old woman was
in a field, gathering hemlock.

Erskine raced down the hill at full speed, and did not look
behind him again until he found himself at nightfall on the
skirts of a town, where he purchased some beer and a sandwich,
which he ate with little appetite. Gertrude had set up a
disturbance within him which made him impatient of eating.

It was now dark. He was many miles from Brandon Beeches, and not
sure of the way back. Suddenly he resolved to complete his
unfinished declaration that evening. He now could not ride back
fast enough to satisfy his impatience. He tried a short cut, lost
himself, spent nearly an hour seeking the highroad, and at last
came upon a railway station just in time to catch a train that
brought him within a mile of his destination.

When he rose from the cushions of the railway carriage he found
himself somewhat fatigued, and he mounted the bicycle stiffly.
But his resolution was as ardent as ever, and his heart beat
strongly as, after leaving his bicycle at the lodge, he walked up
the avenue through the deep gloom beneath the beeches. Near the
house, the first notes of "Grudel perche finora" reached him, and
he stepped softly on to the turf lest his footsteps on the gravel
should rouse the dogs and make them mar the harmony by barking. A
rustle made him stop and listen. Then Gertrude's voice whispered
through the darkness:

"What did you mean by what you said to me within?"

An extraordinary sensation shook Erskine; confused ideas of
fairyland ran through his imagination. A bitter disappointment,
like that of waking from a happy dream, followed as Trefusis's
voice, more finely tuned than he had ever heard it before,
answered,

"Merely that the expanse of stars above us is not more
illimitable than my contempt for Miss Lindsay, nor brighter than
my hopes of Gertrude."

"Miss Lindsay always to you, if you please, Mr. Trefusis."

"Miss Lindsay never to me, but only to those who cannot see
through her to the soul within, which is Gertrude. There are a
thousand Miss Lindsays in the world, formal and false. There is
but one Gertrude."

"I am an unprotected girl, Mr. Trefusis, and you can call me what
you please."

It occurred to Erskine that this was a fit occasion to rush
forward and give Trefusis, whose figure he could now dimly
discern, a black eye. But he hesitated, and the opportunity
passed.

"Unprotected!" said Trefusis. "Why, you are fenced round and
barred in with conventions, laws, and lies that would frighten
the truth from the lips of any man whose faith in Gertrude was
less strong than mine. Go to Sir Charles and tell him what I have
said to Miss Lindsay, and within ten minutes I shall have passed
these gates with a warning never to approach them again. I am in
your power, and were I in Miss Lindsay's power alone, my shrift
would be short. Happily, Gertrude, though she sees as yet but
darkly, feels that Miss Lindsay is her bitterest foe."

"It is ridiculous. I am not two persons; I am only one. What does
it matter to me if your contempt for me is as illimitable as the
stars?"

"Ah, you remember that, do you? Whenever you hear a man talking
about the stars you may conclude that he is either an astronomer
or a fool. But you and a fine starry night would make a fool of
any man."

"I don't understand you. I try to, but I cannot; or, if I guess,
I cannot tell whether you are in earnest or not."

"I am very much in earnest. Abandon at once and for ever all
misgivings that I am trifling with you, or passing an idle hour
as men do when they find themselves in the company of beautiful
women. I mean what I say literally, and in the deepest sense. You
doubt me; we have brought society to such a state that we all
suspect one another. But whatever is true will command belief
sooner or later from those who have wit enough to comprehend
truth. Now let me recall Miss Lindsay to consciousness by
remarking that we have been out for ten minutes, and that our
hostess is not the woman to allow our absence to pass without
comment."

"Let us go in. Thank you for reminding me."

"Thank you for forgetting."

Erskine heard their footsteps retreating, and presently saw the
two enter the glow of light that shone from the open window of
the billiard room, through which they went indoors. Trefusis, a
man whom he had seen that day in a beautiful landscape, blind to
everything except a row of figures in a Blue Book, was his
successful rival, although it was plain from the very sound of
his voice that he did notcould notlove Gertrude. Only a poet
could do that. Trefusis was no poet, but a sordid brute unlikely
to inspire interest in anything more human than a public meeting,
much less in a woman, much less again in a woman so ethereal as
Gertrude. She was proud too, yet she had allowed the fellow to
insult herhad forgiven him for the sake of a few broad
compliments. Erskine grew angry and cynical. The situation did
not suit his poetry. Instead of being stricken to the heart with
a solemn sorrow, as a Patriot Martyr would have been under
similar circumstances, he felt slighted and ridiculous. He was
hardly convinced of what had seemed at first the most obvious
feature of the case, Trefusis's inferiority to himself.

He stood under the trees until Trefusis reappeared on his way
home, making, Erskine thought, as much noise with his heels on
the gravel as a regiment of delicately bred men would have done.
He stopped for a moment to make inquiry at the lodge as he went
out; then his footsteps died away in the distance.

Erskine, chilled, stiff, and with a sensation of a bad cold
coming on, went into the house, and was relieved to find that
Gertrude had retired, and that Lady Brandon, though she had been
sure that he had ridden into the river in the dark, had
nevertheless provided a warm supper for him.

CHAPTER XV

Erskine soon found plenty of themes for his newly begotten
cynicism. Gertrude's manner towards him softened so much that he,
believing her heart given to his rival, concluded that she was
tempting him to make a proposal which she had no intention of
accepting. Sir Charles, to whom he told what he had overheard in
the avenue, professed sympathy, but was evidently pleased to
learn that there was nothing serious in the attentions Trefusis
paid to Agatha. Erskine wrote three bitter sonnets on hollow
friendship and showed them to Sir Charles, who, failing to apply
them to himself, praised them highly and showed them to Trefusis
without asking the author's permission. Trefusis remarked that in
a corrupt society expressions of dissatisfaction were always
creditable to a writer's sensibility; but he did not say much in
praise of the verse.

"Why has he taken to writing in this vein?" he said. "Has he been
disappointed in any way of late? Has he proposed to Miss Lindsay
and been rejected?"

"No," said Sir Charles surprised by this blunt reference to a
subject they had never before discussed. "He does not intend to
propose to Miss Lindsay."

"But he did intend to."

"He certainly did, but he has given up the idea."

"Why?" said Trefusis, apparently disapproving strongly of the
renunciation.

Sir Charles shrugged his shoulders and did not reply.

"I am sorry to hear it. I wish you could induce him to change his
mind. He is a nice fellow, with enough to live on comfortably,
whilst he is yet what is called a poor man, so that she could
feel perfectly disinterested in marrying him. It will do her good
to marry without making a pecuniary profit by it; she will
respect herself the more afterwards, and will neither want bread
and butter nor be ashamed of her husband's origin, in spite of
having married for love alone. Make a match of it if you can. I
take an interest in the girl; she has good instincts."

Sir Charles's suspicion that Trefusis was really paying court to
Agatha returned after this conversation, which he repeated to
Erskine, who, much annoyed because his poems had been shown to a
reader of Blue Books, thought it only a blind for Trefusis's
design upon Gertrude. Sir Charles pooh-poohed this view, and the
two friends were sharp with one another in discussing it. After
dinner, when the ladies had left them, Sir Charles, repentant and
cordial, urged Erskine to speak to Gertrude without troubling
himself as to the sincerity of Trefusis. But Erskine, knowing
himself ill able to brook a refusal, was loth to expose himself
to o

278

"If you had heard the tone of her voice when she asked him
whether he was in earnest, you would not talk to me like this,"
he said despondently. "I wish he had never come here."

"Well, that, at least, was no fault of mine, my dear fellow,"
said Sir Charles. "He came among us against my will. And now that
he appears to have been in the rightlegallyabout the field,
it would look like spite if I cut him. Besides, he really isn't a
bad man if he would only let the women alone."

"If he trifles with Miss Lindsay, I shall ask him to cross the
Channel, and have a shot at him."

"I don't think he'd go," said Sir Charles dubiously. "If I were
you, I would try my luck with Gertrude at once. In spite of what
you heard, I don't believe she would marry a man of his origin.
His money gives him an advantage, certainly, but Gertrude has
sent richer men to the rightabout."

"Let the fellow have fair play," said Erskine. "I may be wrong,
of course; all men are liable to err in judging themselves, but I
think I could make her happier than he can."

Sir Charles was not so sure of that, but he cheerfully responded,
"Certainly. He is not the man for her at all, and you are. He
knows it, too."

"Hmf!" muttered Erskine, rising dejectedly. "Let's go upstairs."

"By-the-bye, we are to call on him to-morrow, to go through his
house, and his collection of photographs. Photographs! Ha, ha"
Damn his house!" said Erskine.

Next day they went together to Sallust's House. It stood in the
midst of an acre of land, waste except a little kitchen garden at
the rear. The lodge at the entrance was uninhabited, and the
gates stood open, with dust and fallen leaves heaped up against
them. Free ingress had thus been afforded to two stray ponies, a
goat, and a tramp, who lay asleep in the grass. His wife sat
near, watching him.

"I have a mind to turn back," said Sir Charles, looking about him
in disgust. " The place is scandalously neglected. Look at that
rascal asleep within full view of the windows."

"I admire his cheek," said Erskine. "Nice pair of ponies, too."

Sallust's House was square and painted cinnamon color. Beneath
the cornice was a yellow frieze with figures of dancing children,
imitated from the works of Donatello, and very unskilfully
executed. There was a meagre portico of four columns, painted
red, and a plain pediment, painted yellow. The colors, meant to
match those of the walls, contrasted disagreeably with them,
having been applied more recently, apparently by a color-blind
artist. The door beneath the portico stood open. Sir Charles rang
the bell, and an elderly woman answered it; but before they could
address her, Trefusis appeared, clad in a painter's jacket of
white jean. Following him in, they found that the house was a
hollow square, enclosing a courtyard with a bath sunk in the
middle, and a fountain in the centre of the bath. The courtyard,
formerly open to the sky, was now roofed in with dusty glass; the
nymph that had once poured out the water of the fountain was
barren and mutilated; and the bath was partly covered in with
loose boards, the exposed part accommodating a heap of coals in
one corner, a heap of potatoes in another, a beer barrel, some
old carpets, a tarpaulin, and a broken canoe. The marble pavement
extended to the outer walls of the house, and was roofed in at
the sides by the upper stories,which were supported by fluted
stone columns, much stained and chipped. The staircase, towards
which Trefusis led his visitors, was a broad one at the end
opposite the door, and gave access to a gallery leading to the
upper rooms.

"This house was built in 11780 by an ancestor of my mother," said
Trefusis. "He passed for a man of exquisite taste. He wished the
place to be maintained foreverhe actually used that expression
in his willas the family seat, and he collected a fine library
here, which I found useful, as all the books came into my hands
in good condition, most of them with the leaves uncut. Some
people prize uncut copies of old editions; a dealer gave me three
hundred and fifty pounds for a lot of them. I came into
possession of a number of family fetishesheirlooms, as they are
called. There was a sword that one of my forbears wore at
Edgehill and other battles in Charles the First's time. We fought
on the wrong side, of course, but the sword fetched thirty-five
shillings nevertheless. You will hardly believe that I was
offered one hundred and fifty pounds for a gold cup worth about
twenty-five, merely because Queen Elizabeth once drank from it.
This is my study. It was designed for a banqueting hall."

They entered a room as long as the wall of the house, pierced on
one side by four tall windows, between which square pillars, with
Corinthian capitals supporting the cornice, were half sunk in the
wall. There were similar pillars on the opposite side, but
between them, instead of windows, were arched niches in which
stood life-size plaster statues, chipped, broken, and defaced in
an extraordinary fashion. The flooring, of diagonally set narrow
boards, was uncarpeted and unpolished. The ceiling was adorned
with frescoes, which at once excited Sir Charles's interest, and
he noted with indignation that a large portion of the painting at
the northern end had been destroyed and some glass roofing
inserted. In another place bolts had been driven in to support
the ropes of a trapeze and a few other pieces of gymnastic
apparatus. The walls were whitewashed, and at about four feet
from the ground a dark band appeared, produced by pencil
memoranda and little sketches scribbled on the whitewash. One end
of the apartment was unfurnished, except by the gymnastic
apparatus, a photographer's camera, a ladder in the corner, and a
common deal table with oil cans and paint pots upon it. At the
other end a comparatively luxurious show was made by a large
bookcase, an elaborate combination of bureau and writing desk, a
rack with a rifle, a set of foils, and an umbrella in it, several
folio albums on a table, some comfortable chairs and sofas, and a
thick carpet under foot. Close by, and seeming much out of place,
was a carpenter's bench with the usual implements and a number of
boards of various thicknesses.

"This is a sort of comfort beyond the reach of any but a rich
man," said Trefusis, turning and surprising his visitors in the
act of exchanging glances of astonishment at his taste. " I keep
a drawing-room of the usual kind for receiving strangers with
whom it is necessary to be conventional, but I never enter it
except on such occasions. What do you think of this for a study?"

"On my soul, Trefusis, I think you are mad," said Sir Charles.
"The place looks as if it had stood a siege. How did you manage
to break the statues and chip the walls so outrageously?"

Trefusis took a newspaper from the table and said, "Listen to
this:

'In spite of the unfavorable nature of the weather, the sport of
the Emperor and his guests in Styria has been successful. In
three days 52 chamois and 79 stags and deer fell to 19
single-barrelled rifles, the Emperor allowing no more on this
occasion.'

"I share the Emperor's delight in shooting, but I am no butcher,
and do not need the royal relish of blood to my sport. And I do
not share my ancestors' taste in statuary. Hence" Here Trefusis
opened a drawer, took out a pistol, and fired at the Hebe in the
farthest niche.

"Well done!" said Erskine coolly, as the last fragment of Hebe's
head crumbled at the touch of the bullet.

"Very fruitlessly done," said Trefusis. "I am a good shot, but of
what use is it to me? None. I once met a gamekeeper who was a
Methodist. He was a most eloquent speaker, but A bad shot. If he
could have swapped talents with me I would have given him ten
thousand pounds to boot willingly, although he would have
profited as much as I by the exchange alone. I have no more
desire or need to be a good shot than to be king of England, or
owner of a Derby winner, or anything else equally ridiculous, and
yet I never missed my aim in my lifethank blind fortune for
nothing!"

"King of England!" said Erskine, with a scornful laugh, to show
Trefusis that other people were as liberty-loving as he. "Is it
not absurd to hear a nation boasting of its freedom and
tolerating a king?"

"Oh, hang your republicanism, Chester!" said Sir Charles, who
privately held a low opinion of the political side of the Patriot
Martyrs.

"I won't he put down on that point," said Erskine. "I admire a
man that kills a king. You will agree with me there, Trefusis,
won't you?"

"Certainly not," said Trefusis. "A king nowadays is only a dummy
put up to draw your fire off the real oppressors of society, and
the fraction of his salary that he can spend as he likes is
usually far too small for his risk, his trouble, and the
condition of personal slavery to which he is reduced. What
private man in England is worse off than the constitutional
monarch? We deny him all privacy; he may not marry whom he
chooses, consort with whom he prefers, dress according to his
taste, or live where he pleases. I don't believe he may even eat
or drink what he likes best; a taste for tripe and onions on his
part would provoke a remonstrance from the Privy Council. We
dictate everything except his thoughts and dreams, and even these
he must keep to himself if they are not suitable, in our opinion,
to his condition. The work we impose on him has all the hardship
of mere task work; it is unfruitful, incessant, monotonous, and
has to be transacted for the most part with nervous bores. We
make his kingdom a treadmill to him, and drive him to and fro on
the face of it. Finally, having taken everything else that men
prize from him, we fall upon his character, and that of every
person to whom he ventures to show favor. We impose enormous
expenses on him, stint him, and then rail at his parsimony. We
use him as I use those statuesstick him up in the place of
honor for our greater convenience in disfiguring and abusing him.
We send him forth through our crowded cities, proclaiming that he
is the source of all good and evil in the nation, and he, knowing
that many people believe it, knowing that it is a lie, and that
he is powerless to shorten the working day by one hour, raise
wages one penny, or annul the smallest criminal sentence, however
unjust it may seem to him; knowing that every miner in the
kingdom can manufacture dynamite, and that revolvers are sold for
seven and sixpence apiece; knowing that he is not bullet proof,
and that every king in Europe has been shot at in the streets; he
must smile and bow and maintain an expression of gracious
enjoyment whilst the mayor and corporation inflict upon him the
twaddling address he has heard a thousand times before. I do not
ask you to be loyal, Erskine; but I expect you, in common
humanity, to sympathize with the chief figure in the pageant, who
is no more accountable for the manifold evils and abominations
that exist in his realm than the Lord Mayor is accountable for
the thefts of the pickpockets who follow his show on the ninth of
November."

Sir Charles laughed at the trouble Trefusis took to prove his
case, and said soothingly, "My dear fellow, kings are used to it,
and expect it, and like it."

"And probably do not see themselves as I see them, any more than
common people do," assented Trefusis.

"What an exquisite face!" exclaimed Erskine suddenly, catching
sight of a photograph in a rich gold and coral frame on a
miniature easel draped with ruby velvet. Trefusis turned quickly,
so evidently gratified that Sir Charles hastened to say,
"Charming!" Then, looking at the portrait, he added, as if a
little startled, "It certainly is an extraordinarily attractive
face."

"Years ago," said Trefusis, "when I saw that face for the first
time, I felt as you feel now."

Silence ensued, the two visitors looking at the portrait,
Trefusis looking at them.

"Curious style of beauty," said Sir Charles at last, not quite so
assuredly as before.

Trefusis laughed unpleasantly. "Do you recognize the artistthe
enthusiastic amateurin her?" he said, opening another drawer
and taking out a bundle of drawings, which he handed to be
examined.

"Very clever. Very clever indeed," said Sir Charles. "I should
like to meet the lady."

"I have often been on the point of burning them," said Trefusis;
"but there they are, and there they are likely to remain. The
portrait has been much admired."

"Can you give us an introduction to the original, old fellow?"
said Erskine.

"No, happily. She is dead."

Disagreeably shocked, they looked at him for a moment with
aversion. Then Erskine, turning with pity and disappointment to
the picture, said, "Poor girl! Was she married?"

"Yes. To me."

"Mrs. Trefusis!" exclaimed Sir Charles. "Ah! Dear me!"

Erskine, with proof before him that it was possible for a
beautiful girl to accept Trefusis, said nothing.

"I keep her portrait constantly before me to correct my natural
amativeness. I fell in love with her and married her. I have
fallen in love once or twice since but a glance at my lost Hetty
has cured me of the slightest inclination to marry."

Sir Charles did not reply. It occurred to him that Lady Brandon's
portrait, if nothing else were left of her, might be useful in
the same way.

"Come, you will marry again one of these days," said Erskine, in
a forced tone of encouragement.

"It is possible. Men should marry, especially rich men. But I
assure you I have no present intention of doing so."

Erskine's color deepened, and he moved away to the table where
the albums lay.

"This is the collection of photographs I spoke of," said
Trefusis, following him and opening one of the books. "I took
many of them myself under great difficulties with regard to
lightthe only difficulty that money could not always remove.
This is a view of my father's houseor rather one of his houses.
It cost seventy-five thousand pounds."

"Very handsome indeed," said Sir Charles, secretly disgusted at
being invited to admire a photograph, such as house agents
exhibit, of a vulgarly designed country house, merely because it
had cost seventy-five thousand pounds. The figures were actually
written beneath the picture.

"This is the drawing-room, and this one of the best bedrooms. In
the right-hand corner of the mount you will see a note of the
cost of the furniture, fittings, napery, and so forth. They were
of the most luxurious description."

"Very interesting," said Sir Charles, hardly disguising the irony
of the comment.

"Here is a viewthis is the first of my own attemptsof the
apartment of one of the under servants. It is comfortable and
spacious, and solidly furnished."

"So I perceive."

"These are the stables. Are they not handsome?"

"Palatial. Quite palatial."

"There is every luxury that a horse could desire, including
plenty of valets to wait on him. You are noting the figures, I
hope. There is the cost of the building and the expenditure per
horse per annum."

"I see."

"Here is the exterior of a house. What do you think of it?"

"It is rather picturesque in its dilapidation."

"Picturesque! Would you like to live in it?"

"No," said Erskine. "I don't see anything very picturesque about
it. What induced you to photograph such a wretched old rookery?"

"Here is a view of the best room in it. Photography gives you a
fair idea of the broken flooring and patched windows, but you
must imagine the dirt and the odor of the place. Some of the
stains are weather stains, others came from smoke and filth. The
landlord of the house holds it from a peer and lets it out in
tenements. Three families occupied that room when I photographed
it. You will see by the figures in the corner that it is more
profitable to the landlord than an average house in Mayfair. Here
is the cellar, let to a family for one and sixpence a week, and
considered a bargain. The sun never shines there, of course. I
took it by artificial light. You may add to the rent the cost of
enough bad beer to make the tenant insensible to the filth of the
place. Beer is the chloroform that enables the laborer to endure
the severe operation of living; that is why we can always assure
one another over our wine that the rascal's misery is due to his
habit of drinking. We are down on him for it, because, if he
could bear his life without beer, we should save his
beer-moneyget him for lower wages. In short, we should be
richer and he soberer. Here is the yard; the arrangements are
indescribable. Seven of the inhabitants of that house had worked
for years in my father's mill. That is, they had created a
considerable part of the vast sums of money for drawing your
attention to which you were disgusted with me just now."

"Not at all," said Sir Charles faintly.

"You can see how their condition contrasts with that of my
father's horses. The seven men to whom I have alluded, with three
hundred others, were thrown destitute upon the streets by this."
(Here he turned over a leaf and displayed a photograph of an
elaborate machine.) "It enabled my father to dispense with their
services, and to replace them by a handful of women and children.
He had bought the patent of the machine for fifty pounds from the
inventor, who was almost ruined by the expenses of his ingenuity,
and would have sacrificed anything for a handful of ready money.
Here is a portrait of my father in his masonic insignia. He
believed that freemasons generally get on in the world, and as
the main object of his life was to get on, he joined them, and
wanted me to do the same. But I object to pretended secret
societies and hocus pocus, and would not. You see what he wasa
portly, pushing, egotistical tradesman. Mark the successful man,
the merchant prince with argosies on every sea, the employer of
thousands of hands, the munificent contributor to public
charities, the churchwarden, the member of parliament, and the
generous patron of his relatives his self-approbation struggling
with the instinctive sense of baseness in the money-hunter, the
ignorant and greedy filcher of the labor of others, the seller of
his own mind and manhood for luxuries and delicacies that he was
too lowlived to enjoy, and for the society of people who made him
feel his inferiority at every turn."

"And the man to whom you owe everything you possess," said
Erskine boldly.

"I possess very little. Everything he left me, except a few
pictures, I spent long ago, and even that was made by his slaves
and not by him. My wealth comes day by day fresh from the labor
of the wretches who live in the dens I have just shown you, or of
a few aristocrats of labor who are within ten shillings a week of
being worse off. However, there is some excuse for my father.
Once, at an election riot, I got into a free fight. I am a
peaceful man, but as I had either to fight or be knocked down and
trampled upon, I exchanged blows with men who were perhaps as
peacefully disposed as I. My father, launched into a free
competition (free in the sense that the fight is free: that is,
lawless)my father had to choose between being a slave himself
and enslaving others. He chose the latter, and as he was
applauded and made much of for succeeding, who dare blame him?
Not I. Besides, he did something to destroy the anarchy that
enabled him to plunder society with impunity. He furnished me,
its enemy, with the powerful weapon of a large fortune. Thus our
system of organizing industry sometimes hatches the eggs from
which its destroyers break. Does Lady Brandon wear much lace?"

"INo; that isHow the deuce dO I know, Trefusis? What an
extraordinary question!"

"This is a photograph of a lace school. It was a filthy room,
twelve feet square. It was paved with brick, and the children
were not allowed to wear their boots, lest the lace should get
muddy. However, as there were twenty of them working there for
fifteen hours a dayall girlsthey did not suffer much from
cold. They were pretty tightly packedmay be still, for aught I
know. They brought three or four shillings a week sometimes to
their fond parents; and they were very quick-fingered little
creatures, and stuck intensely to their work, as the overseer
always hit them when they looked up or"

"Trefusis," said Sir Charles, turning away from the table, "I beg
your pardon, but I have no appetite for horrors. You really must
not ask me to go through your collection. It is no doubt very
interesting, but I can't stand it. Have you nothing pleasant to
entertain me with?"

"Pooh! you are squeamish. However, as you are a novice, let us
put off the rest until you are seasoned. The pictures are not all
horrible. Each book refers to a different country. That one
contains illustrations of modern civilization in Germany, for
instance. That one is France; that, British India. Here you have
the United States of America, home of liberty, theatre of manhood
suffrage, kingless and lordless land of Protection,
Republicanism, and the realized Radical Programme, where all the
black chattel slaves were turned into wage-slaves (like my
father's white fellows) at a cost of 800,000 lives and wealth
incalculable. You and I are paupers in comparison with the great
capitalists of that country, where the laborers fight for bones
with the Chinamen, like dogs. Some of these great men presented
me with photographs of their yachts and palaces, not anticipating
the use to which I would put them. Here are some portraits that
will not harrow your feelings. This is my mother, a woman of good
family, every inch a lady. Here is a Lancashire lass, the
daughter of a common pitman. She has exactly the same physical
characteristics as my well-born motherthe same small head,
delicate features, and so forth; they might be sisters. This
villainous-looking pair might be twin brothers, except that there
is a trace of good humor about the one to the right. The
good-humored one is a bargee on the Lyvern Canal. The other is
one of the senior noblemen of the British Peerage. They
illustrate the fact that Nature, even when perverted by
generations of famine fever, ignores the distinctions we set up
between men. This group of men and women, all tolerably
intelligent and thoughtful looking, are so-called enemies of
societyNihilists, Anarchists, Communards, members of the
International,and so on. These other poor devils, worried, stiff,
strumous, awkward, vapid, and rather coarse, with here and there
a passably pretty woman, are European kings, queens, grand-dukes,
and the like. Here are ship-captains, criminals, poets, men of
science, peers, peasants, political economists, and
representatives of dozens of degrees. The object of the
collection is to illustrate the natural inequality of man, and
the failure of our artificial inequality to correspond with it."

"It seems to me a sort of infernal collection for the upsetting
of people's ideas," said Erskine. "You ought to label it 'A
Portfolio of Paradoxes.'"

"In a rational state of society they would be paradoxes; but now
the time gives them prooflike Hamlet's paradox. It is, however,
a collection of facts; and I will give no fanciful name to it.
You dislike figures, don't you?"

"Unless they are by Phidias, yes."

"Here are a few, not by Phidias. This is the balance sheet of an
attempt I made some years ago to carry out the idea of an
International Association of Laborerscommonly known as THE
Internationalor union of all workmen throughout the world in
defence of the interests of labor. You see the result.
Expenditure, four thousand five hundred pounds. Subscriptions
received from working-men, twenty-two pounds seven and ten pence
halfpenny. The British workmen showed their sense of my efforts
to emancipate them by accusing me of making a good thing out of
the Association for my own pocket, and by mobbing and stoning me
twice. I now help them only when they show some disposition to
help themselves. I occupy myself partly in working out a scheme
for the reorganization of industry, and partly in attacking my
own class, women and all, as I am attacking you."

"There is little use in attacking us, I fear," said Sir Charles.

"Great use," said Trefusis confidently. "You have a very
different opinion of our boasted civilization now from that which
you held when I broke your wall down and invited those Land
Nationalization zealots to march across your pleasure ground. You
have seen in my album something you had not seen an hour ago, and
you are consequently not quite the same man you were an hour ago.
My pictures stick in the mind longer than your scratchy etchings,
or the leaden things in which you fancy you see tender harmonies
in gray. Erskine's next drama may be about liberty, but its
Patriot Martyrs will have something better to do than spout
balderdash against figure-head kings who in all their lives never
secretly plotted as much dastardly meanness, greed, cruelty, and
tyranny as is openly voted for in London by every half-yearly
meeting of dividend-consuming vermin whose miserable wage-slaves
drudge sixteen hours out of the twenty-four."

"What is going to be the end of it all?" said Sir Charles, a
little dazed.

"Socialism or Smash. Socialism if the race has at last evolved
the faculty of coordinating the functions of a society too
crowded and complex to be worked any longer on the old haphazard
private-property system. Unless we reorganize our society
socialisticallyhumanly a most arduous and magnificent
enterprise, economically a most simple and sound oneFree Trade
by itself will ruin England, and I will tell you exactly how.
When my father made his fortune we had the start of all other
nations in the organization of our industry and in our access to
iron and coal. Other nations bought our products for less than
they must have spent to raise them at home, and yet for so much
more than they cost us, that profits rolled in Atlantic waves
upon our capitalists. When the workers, by their trades-unions,
demanded a share of the luck in the form of advanced wages, it
paid better to give them the little they dared to ask than to
stop gold-gathering to fight and crush them. But now our
customers have set up in their own countries improved copies of
our industrial organization, and have discovered places where
iron and coal are even handier than they are by this time in
England. They produce for themselves, or buy elsewhere, what they
formerly bought from us. Our profits are vanishing, our machinery
is standing idle, our workmen are locked out. It pays now to stop
the mills and fight and crush the unions when the men strike, no
longer for an advance, but against a reduction. Now that these
unions are beaten, helpless, and drifting to bankruptcy as the
proportion of unemployed men in their ranks becomes greater, they
are being petted and made much of by our class; an infallible
sign that they are making no further progress in their duty of
destroying us. The small capitalists are left stranded by the
ebb; the big ones will follow the tide across the water, and
rebuild their factories where steam power, water power, labor
power, and transport are now cheaper than in England, where they
used to be cheapest. The workers will emigrate in pursuit of the
factory, but they will multiply faster than they emigrate, and be
told that their own exorbitant demand for wages is driving
capital abroad, and must continue to do so whilst there is a
Chinaman or a Hindoo unemployed to underbid them. As the British
factories are shut up, they will be replaced by villas; the
manufacturing districts will become fashionable resorts for
capitalists living on the interest of foreign investments; the
farms and sheep runs will be cleared for deer forests. All
products that can in the nature of things be manufactured
elsewhere than where they are consumed will be imported in
payment of deer-forest rents from foreign sportsmen, or of
dividends due to shareholders resident in England, but holding
shares in companies abroad, and these imports will not be paid
for by ex ports, because rent and interest are not paid for at
alla fact which the Free Traders do not yet see, or at any rate
do not mention, although it is the key to the whole mystery of
their opponents. The cry for Protection will become wild, but no
one will dare resort to a demonstrably absurd measure that must
raise prices before it raises wages, and that has everywhere
failed to benefit the worker. There will be no employment for
anyone except in doing things that must be done on the spot, such
as unpacking and distributing the imports, ministering to the
proprietors as domestic servants, or by acting, preaching,
paving, lighting, housebuilding, and the rest; and some of these,
as the capitalist comes to regard ostentation as vulgar, and to
enjoy a simpler life, will employ fewer and fewer people. A vast
proletariat, beginning with a nucleus of those formerly employed
in export trades, with their multiplying progeny, will be out of
employment permanently. They will demand access to the land and
machinery to produce for themselves. They will be refused. They
will break a few windows and be dispersed with a warning to their
leaders. They will burn a few houses and murder a policeman or
two, and then an example will be made of the warned. They will
revolt, and be shot down with
machine-gunsemigratedexterminated anyhow and everyhow; for
the proprietary classes have no idea of any other means of
dealing with the full claims of labor. You yourself, though you
would give fifty pounds to Jansenius's emigration fund readily
enough, would call for the police, the military, and the Riot
Act, if the people came to Brandon Beeches and bade you turn out
and work for your living with the rest. Well, the superfluous
proletariat destroyed, there will remain a population of
capitalists living on gratuitous imports and served by a
disaffected retinue. One day the gratuitous imports will stop in
consequence of the occurrence abroad of revolution and
repudiation, fall in the rate of interest, purchase of industries
by governments for lump sums, not reinvestable, or what not. Our
capitalist community is then thrown on the remains of the last
dividend, which it consumes long before it can rehabilitate its
extinct machinery of production in order to support itself with
its own hands. Horses, dogs, cats, rats, blackberries, mushrooms,
and cannibalism only postpone"

"Ha! ha! ha!" shouted Sir Charles. "On my honor, I thought you
were serious at first, Trefusis. Come, confess, old chap; it's
all a fad of yours. I half suspected you of being a bit of a
crank." And he winked at Erskine.

"What I have described to you is the inevitable outcome of our
present Free Trade policy without Socialism. The theory of Free
Trade is only applicable to systems of exchange, not to systems
of spoliation. Our system is one of spoliation, and if we don't
abandon it, we must either return to Protection or go to smash by
the road I have just mapped. Now, sooner than let the
Protectionists triumph, the Cobden Club itself would blow the
gaff and point out to the workers that Protection only means
compelling the proprietors of England to employ slaves resident
in England and therefore presumablythough by no means
necessarilyEnglishmen. This would open the eyes of the nation
at last to the fact that England is not their property. Once let
them understand that and they would soon make it so. When England
is made the property of its inhabitants collectively, England
becomes socialistic. Artificial inequality will vanish then
before real freedom of contract; freedom of competition, or
unhampered emulation, will keep us moving ahead; and Free Trade
will fulfil its promises at last."

"And the idlers and loafers," said Erskine. "What of them?"

"You and I, in fact," said Trefusis, "die of starvation, I
suppose, unless we choose to work, or unless they give us a
little out-door relief in consideration of our bad bringing-up."

"Do you mean that they will plunder us?" said Sir Charles.

"I mean that they will make us stop plundering them. If they
hesitate to strip us naked, or to cut our throats if we offer
them the smallest resistance, they will show us more mercy than
we ever showed them. Consider what we have done to get our rents
in Ireland and Scotland, and our dividends in Egypt, if you have
already forgotten my photographs and their lesson in our
atrocities at home. Why, man, we murder the great mass of these
toilers with overwork and hardship; their average lifetime is not
half as long as ours. Human nature is the same in them as in us.
If we resist them, and succeed in restoring order, as we call it,
we will punish them mercilessly for their insubordination, as we
did in Paris in 1871, where, by-the-bye, we taught them the folly
of giving their enemies quarter. If they beat us, we shall catch
it, and serve us right. Far better turn honest at once and avert
bloodshed. Eh, Erskine?"

Erskine was considering what reply he should make, when Trefusis
disconcerted him by ringing a bell. Presently the elderly woman
appeared, pushing before her an oblong table mounted on wheels,
like a barrow.

"Thank you," said Trefusis, and dismissed her. "Here is some good
wine, some good water, some good fruit, and some good bread. I
know that you cling to wine as to a good familiar creature. As
for me, I make no distinction between it and other vegetable
poisons. I abstain from them all. Water for serenity, wine for
excitement. I, having boiling springs of excitement within
myself, am never at a loss for it, and have only to seek
serenity. However," (here he drew a cork), "a generous goblet of
this will make you feel like gods for half an hour at least.
Shall we drink to your conversion to Socialism?"

Sir Charles shook his head.

"Come, Mr. Donovan Brown, the great artist, is a Socialist, and
why should not you be one?"

"Donovan Brown!" exclaimed Sir Charles with interest. "Is it
possible? Do you know him personally?"

"Here are several letters from him. You may read them; the mere
autograph of such a man is interesting."

Sir Charles took the letters and read them earnestly, Erskine
reading over his shoulder.

"Of course you agree with us. Donovan Brown's eminence as an
artist has gained me one recruit, and yours as a baronet will
gain me some more."

"But"

"But what?" said Trefusis, deftly opening one of the albums at a
photograph of a loathsome room.

"You are against that, are you not? Donovan Brown is against it,
and I am against it. You may disagree with us in everything else,
but there you are at one with us. Is it not so?"

"But that may be the result of drunkenness, improvidence, or"

"My father's income was fifty times as great as that of Donovan
Brown. Do you believe that Donovan Brown is fifty times as
drunken and improvident as my father was?"

"Certainly not. I do not deny that there is much in what you
urge. Still, you ask me to take a rather important step."

"Not a bit of it. I don't ask you to subscribe to, join, or in
any way pledge yourself to any society or conspiracy whatsoever.
I only want your name for private mention to cowards who think
Socialism right, but will not say so because they do not think it
respectable. They will not be ashamed of their convictions when
they learn that a baronet shares them. Socialism offers you
something already, you see; a good use for your hitherto useless
title."

Sir Charles colored a little, conscious that the example of his
favorite painter had influenced him more than his own conviction
or the arguments of Trefusis.

"What do you think, Chester?" he said. "Will you join?"

"Erskine is already committed to the cause of liberty by his
published writings," said Trefusis. "Three of the pamphlets on
that shelf contain quotations from 'The Patriot Martyrs.'"

Erskine blushed, flattered by being quoted; an attention that had
been shown him only once before, and then by a reviewer with the
object of proving that the Patriot Martyrs were slovenly in their
grammar.

"Come!" said Trefusis. "Shall I write to Donovan Brown that his
letters have gained the cordial assent and sympathy of Sir
Charles Brandon?"

"Certainly, certainly. That is, if my unknown name would be of
the least interest to him."

"Good," said Trefusis, filling his glass with water. "Erskine,
let us drink to our brother Social Democrat."

Erskine laughed loudly, but not heartily. "What an ass you are,
Brandon!" he said. "You, with a large landed estate, and bags of
gold invested in railways, calling yourself a Social Democrat!
Are you going to sell out and distributeto sell all that thou
hast and give to the poor?"

"Not a penny," replied Trefusis for him promptly. "A man cannot
be a Christian in this country. I have tried it and found it
impossible both in law and in fact. I am a capitalist and a
landholder. I have railway shares, mining shares, building
shares, bank shares, and stock of most kinds; and a great trouble
they are to me. But these shares do not represent wealth actually
in existence; they are a mortgage on the labor of unborn
generations of laborers, who must work to keep me and mine in
idleness and luxury. If I sold them, would the mortgage be
cancelled and the unborn generations released from its thrall?
No. It would only pass into the hands of some other capitalist,
and the working class would be no better off for my
self-sacrifice. Sir Charles cannot obey the command of Christ; I
defy him to do it. Let him give his land for a public park; only
the richer classes will have leisure to enjoy it. Plant it at the
very doors of the poor, so that they may at last breathe its air,
and it will raise the value of the neighboring houses and drive
the poor away. Let him endow a school for the poor, like Eton or
Christ's Hospital, and the rich will take it for their own
children as they do in the two instances I have named. Sir
Charles does not want to minister to poverty, but to abolish it.
No matter how much you give to the poor, everything except a bare
subsistence wage will be taken from them again by force. All talk
of practicing Christianity, or even bare justice, is at present
mere waste of words. How can you justly reward the laborer when
you cannot ascertain the value of what he makes, owing to the
prevalent custom of stealing it? I know this by experience. I
wanted to pay a just price for my wife's tomb, but I could not
find out its value, and never shall. The principle on which we
farm out our national industry to private marauders, who
recompense themselves by black-mail, so corrupts and paralyzes us
that we cannot be honest even when we want to. And the reason we
bear it so calmly is that very few of us really want to."

"I must study this question of value," said Sir Charles
dubiously, refilling his goblet. "Can you recommend me a good
book on the subject?"

"Any good treatise on political economy will do," said Trefusis.
"In economics all roads lead to Socialism, although in nine cases
out of ten, so far, the economist doesn't recognize his
destination, and incurs the malediction pronounced by Jeremiah on
those who justify the wicked for reward. I will look you out a
book or two. And if you will call on Donovan Brown the next time
you are in London, he will be delighted, I know. He meets with
very few who are capable of sympathizing with him from both his
points of viewsocial and artistic."

Sir Charles brightened on being reminded of Donovan Brown. "I
shall esteem an introduction to him a great honor," he said. "I
had no idea that he was a friend of yours."

"I was a very practical young Socialist when I first met him,"
said Trefusis. "When Brown was an unknown and wretchedly poor
man, my mother, at the petition of a friend of his, charitably
bought one of his pictures for thirty pounds, which he was very
glad to get. Years afterwards, when my mother was dead, and Brown
famous, I was offered eight hundred pounds for this picture,
which was, by-the-bye, a very bad one in my opinion. Now, after
making the usual unjust allowance for interest on thirty pounds
for twelve years or so that had elapsed, the sale of the picture
would have brought me in a profit of over seven hundred and fifty
pounds, an unearned increment to which I had no righteous claim.
My solicitor, to whom I mentioned the matter, was of opinion that
I might justifiably pocket the seven hundred and fifty pounds as
reward for my mother's benevolence in buying a presumably
worthless picture from an obscure painter. But he failed to
convince me that I ought to be paid for my mother's virtues,
though we agreed that neither I nor my mother had received any
return in the shape of pleasure in contemplating the work, which
had deteriorated considerably by the fading of the colors since
its purchase. At last I went to Brown's studio with the picture,
and told him that it was worth nothing to me, as I thought it a
particularly bad one, and that he might have it back again for
fifteen pounds, half the first price. He at once told me that I
could get from any dealer more for it than he could afford to
give me; but he told me too that I had no right to make a profit
out of his work, and that he would give me the original price of
thirty pounds. I took it, and then sent him the man who had
offered me the eight hundred. To my discomfiture Brown refused to
sell it on any terms, because he considered it unworthy of his
reputation. The man bid up to fifteen hundred, but Brown held
out; and I found that instead of putting seven hundred and
seventy pounds into his pocket I had taken thirty out of it. I
accordingly offered to return the thirty pieces. Brown, taking
the offer as an insult, declined all further communication with
me. I then insisted on the matter being submitted to arbitration,
and demanded fifteen hundred pounds as the full exchange value of
the picture. All the arbitrators agreed that this was monstrous,
whereupon I contended that if they denied my right to the value
in exchange, they must admit my right to the value in use. They
assented to this after putting off their decision for a fortnight
in order to read Adam Smith and discover what on earth I meant by
my values in use and exchange. I now showed that the picture had
no value in use to me, as I disliked it, and that therefore I was
entitled to nothing, and that Brown must take back the thirty
pounds. They were glad to concede this also to me, as they were
all artist friends of Brown, and wished him not to lose money by
the transaction, though they of course privately thought that the
picture was, as I described it, a bad one. After that Brown and I
became very good friends. He tolerated my advances, at first lest
it should seem that he was annoyed by my disparagement of his
work. Subsequently he fell into my views much as you have done."

"That is very interesting," said Sir Charles. "What a noble
thingrefusing fifteen hundred pounds! He could ill afford it,
probably."

"Heroicaccording to nineteenth century notions of heroism.
Voluntarily to throw away a chance of making money! that is the
ne plus ultra of martyrdom. Brown's wife was extremely angry with
him for doing it."

"It is an interesting storyor might be made so," said Erskine.
"But you make my head spin with your confounded exchange values
and stuff. Everything is a question of figures with you."

"That comes of my not being a poet," said Trefusis. "But we
Socialists need to study the romantic side of our movement to
interest women in it. If you want to make a cause grow, instruct
every woman you meet in it. She is or will one day be a wife, and
will contradict her husband with scraps of your arguments. A
squabble will follow. The son will listen, and will be set
thinking if he be capable of thought. And so the mind of the
people gets leavened. I have converted many young women. Most of
them know no more of the economic theory of Socialism than they
know of Chaldee; but they no longer fear or condemn its name. Oh,
I assure you that much can be done in that way by men who are not
afraid of women, and who are not in too great a hurry to see the
harvest they have sown for."

"Take care. Some of your lady proselytes may get the better of
you some day. The future husband to be contradicted may be Sidney
Trefusis. Ha! ha! ha!" Sir Charles had emptied a second large
goblet of wine, and was a little flushed and boisterous.

"No," said Trefusis, "I have had enough of love myself, and am
not likely to inspire it. Women do not care for men to whom, as
Erskine says, everything is a question of figures. I used to
flirt with women; now I lecture them, and abhor a man-flirt worse
than I do a woman one. Some more wine? Oh, you must not waste the
remainder of this bottle."

"I think we had better go, Brandon," said Erskine, his mistrust
of Trefusis growing. "We promised to be back before two."

"So you shall," said Trefusis. "It is not yet a quarter past one.
By-the-bye, I have not shown you Donovan Brown's pet instrument
for the regeneration of society. Here it is. A monster petition
praying that the holding back from the laborer of any portion of
the net value produced by his labor be declared a felony. That is
all."

Erskine nudged Sir Charles, who said hastily, "Thank you, but I
had rather not sign anything."

"A baronet sign such a petition!" exclaimed Trefusis. "I did not
think of asking you. I only show it to you as an interesting
historical document, containing the autographs of a few artists
and poets. There is Donovan Brown's for example. It was he who
suggested the petition, which is not likely to do much good, as
the thing cannot be done in any such fashion However, I have
promised Brown to get as many signatures as I can; so you may as
well sign it, Erskine. It says nothing in blank verse about the
holiness of slaying a tyrant, but it is a step in the right
direction. You will not stick at such a trifleunless the
reviews have frightened you. Come, your name and address."

Erskine shook his head.

"Do you then only commit yourself to revolutionary sentiments
when there is a chance of winning fame as a poet by them?"

"I will not sign, simply because I do not choose to," said
Erskine warmly.

"My dear fellow," said Trefusis, almost affectionately, "if a man
has a conscience he can have no choice in matters of conviction.
I have read somewhere in your book that the man who will not shed
his blood for the liberty of his brothers is a coward and a
slave. Will you not shed a drop of inkmy ink, toofor the
right of your brothers to the work of their hands? I at first
sight did not care to sign this petition, because I would as soon
petition a tiger to share his prey with me as our rulers to relax
their grip of the stolen labor they live on. But Donovan Brown
said to me, 'You have no choice. Either you believe that the
laborer should have the fruit of his labor or you do not. If you
do, put your conviction on record, even if it should be as
useless as Pilate's washing his hands.' So I signed."

"Donovan Brown was right," said Sir Charles. "I will sign." And
he did so with a flourish.

"Brown will be delighted," said Trefusis. "I will write to him
to-day that I have got another good signature for him."

"Two more," said Sir Charles. "You shall sign, Erskine; hang me
if you shan't! It is only against rascals that run away without
paying their men their wages."

"Or that don't pay them in full," observed Trefusis, with a
curious smile. "But do not sign if you feel uncomfortable about
it."

"If you don't sign after me, you are a sneak, Chester," said Sir
Charles.

"It means what it says; you cannot be held responsible for any
meaning that is not expressed in it," said Trefusis. "But never
mind. You mistrust me a little, I fancy, and would rather not
meddle with my petitions; but you will think better of that as
you grow used to me. Meanwhile, there is no hurry. Don't sign
yet."

"Nonsense! I don't doubt your good faith," said Erskine, hastily
disavowing suspicions which he felt but could not account for.
"Here goes!" And he signed.

"Well done!" said Trefusis. "This will make Brown happy for the
rest of the month."

"It is time for us to go now," said Erskine gloomily.

"Look in upon me at any time; you shall be welcome," said
Trefusis. "You need not stand upon any sort of ceremony."

Then they parted; Sir Charles assuring Trefusis that he had never
spent a more interesting morning, and shaking hands with him at
considerable length three times. Erskine said little until he was
in the Riverside Road with his friend, when he suddenly burst
out:

"What the devil do you mean by drinking two tumblers of such
staggering stuff at one o'clock in the day in the house of a
dangerous man like that? I am very sorry I went into the fellow's
place. I had misgivings about it, and they have been fully borne
out."

"How so?" said Sir Charles, taken aback.

"He has overreached us. I was a deuced fool to sign that paper,
and so were you. It was for that that he invited us."

"Rubbish, my dear boy. It was not his paper, but Donovan
Brown's."

"I doubt it. Most likely he talked Brown into signing it just as
he talked us. I tell you his ways are all crooked, like his
ideas. Did you hear how he lied about Miss Lindsay?"

"Oh, you were mistaken about that. He does not care two straws
for her or for anyone."

"Well, if you are satisfied, I am not. You would not be in such
high spirits over it if you had taken as little wine as I."

"Pshaw! you're too ridiculous. It was capital wine. Do you mean
to say I am drunk?"

"No. But you would not have signed if you had not taken that
second goblet. If you had not forced meI could not get out of
it after you set the exampleI would have seen him dd sooner
than have had anything to do with his petition."

"I don't see what harm can come of it," said Sir Charles, braving
out some secret disquietude.

"I will never go into his house again," said Erskine moodily. "We
were just like two flies in a spider's web."

Meanwhile, Trefusis was fulfilling his promise to write to
Donovan Brown.

"Sallust's House.

"Dear Brown: I have spent the forenoon angling for a couple of
very young fish, and have landed them with more trouble than they
are worth. One has gaudy scales: he is a baronet, and an amateur
artist, save the mark. All my arguments and my little museum of
photographs were lost on him; but when I mentioned your name, and
promised him an introduction to you, he gorged the bait greedily.
He was half drunk when he signed; and I should not have let him
touch the paper if I had not convinced myself beforehand that he
means well, and that my wine had only freed his natural
generosity from his conventional cowardice and prejudice. We must
get his name published in as many journals as possible as a
signatory to the great petition; it will draw on others as your
name drew him. The second novice, Chichester Erskine, is a young
poet. He will not be of much use to us, though he is a devoted
champion of liberty in blank verse, and dedicates his works to
Mazzini, etc. He signed reluctantly. All this hesitation is the
uncertainty that comes of ignorance;they have not found out the
truth for themselves, and are afraid to trust me, matters having
come to the pass at which no man dares trust his fellow.

"I have met a pretty young lady here who might serve you as a
model for Hypatia. She is crammed with all the prejudices of the
peerage, but I am effecting a cure. I have set my heart on
marrying her to Erskine, who, thinking that I am making love to
her on my own account, is jealous. The weather is pleasant here,
and I am having a merry life of it, but I find myself too idle.
Etc., etc., etc."

CHAPTER XVI

One sunny forenoon, as Agatha sat reading on the doorstep of the
conservatory, the shadow of her parasol deepened, and she,
looking up for something denser than the silk of it, saw
Trefusis.

"Oh!"

She offered him no further greeting, having fallen in with his
habit of dispensing, as far as possible, with salutations and
ceremonies. He seemed in no hurry to speak, and so, after a
pause, she began, "Sir Charles"

"Is gone to town," he said. "Erskine is out on his bicycle. Lady
Brandon and Miss Lindsay have gone to the village in the
wagonette, and you have come out here to enjoy the summer sun and
read rubbish. I know all your news already."

"You are very clever, and, as usual, wrong. Sir Charles has not
gone to town. He has only gone to the railway station for some
papers; he will be back for luncheon. How do you know so much of
our affairs?"

"I was on the roof of my house with a field-glass. I saw you come
out and sit down here. Then Sir Charles passed. Then Erskine.
Then Lady Brandon, driving with great energy, and presenting a
remarkable contrast to the disdainful repose of Gertrude."

"Gertrude! I like your cheek."

"You mean that you dislike my presumption."

"No, I think cheek a more expressive word than presumption; and I
mean that I like itthat it amuses me."

"Really! What are you reading?"

"Rubbish, you said just now. A novel."

"That is, a lying story of two people who never existed, and who
would have acted very differently if they had existed."

"Just so."

"Could you not imagine something just as amusing for yourself?"

"Perhaps so; but it would be too much trouble. Besides, cooking
takes away one's appetite for eating. I should not relish stories
of my own confection."

"Which volume are you at?"

"The third."

"Then the hero and heroine are on the point of being united?"

"I really don't know. This is one of your clever novels. I wish
the characters would not talk so much."

"No matter. Two of them are in love with one another, are they
not?"

"Yes. It would not be a novel without that."

"Do you believe, in your secret soul, AgathaI take the liberty
of using your Christian name because I wish to be very solemndo
you really believe that any human being was ever unselfish enough
to love another in the story-book fashion?"

"Of course. At least I suppose so. I have never thought much
about it."

"I doubt it. My own belief is that no latter-day man has any
faith in the thoroughness or permanence of his affection for his
mate. Yet he does not doubt the sincerity of her professions, and
he conceals the hollowness of his own from her, partly because he
is ashamed of it, and partly out of pity for her. And she, on the
other side, is playing exactly the same comedy."

"I believe that is what men do, but not women."

"Indeed! Pray do you remember pretending to be very much in love
with me once when"

Agatha reddened and placed her palm on the step as if about to
spring up. But she checked herself and said: "Stop, Mr. Trefusis.
If you talk about that I shall go away. I wonder at you! Have you
no taste?',

"None whatever. And as I was the aggrieved party on thatstay,
don't go. I will never allude to it again. I am growing afraid of
you. You used to be afraid of me."

"Yes; and you used to bully me. You have a habit of bullying
women who are weak enough to fear you. You are a great deal
cleverer than I, and know much more, I dare say; but I am not in
the least afraid of you now."

"You have no reason to be, and never had any. Henrietta, if she
were alive, could testify that it there is a defect in my
relations with women, it arises from my excessive amiability. I
could not refuse a woman anything she had set her heart
uponexcept my hand in marriage. As long as your sex are content
to stop short of that they can do as they please with me."

"How cruel! I thought you were nearly engaged to Gertrude."

"The usual interpretation of a friendship between a man and a
woman! I have never thought of such a thing; and I am sure she
never has. We are not half so intimate as you and Sir Charles."

"Oh, Sir Charles is married. And I advise you to get married if
you wish to avoid creating misunderstandings by your
friendships."

Trefusis was struck. Instead of answering, he stood, after one
startled glance at her, looking intently at the knuckle of his
forefinger.

"Do take pity on our poor sex," said Agatha maliciously. "You are
so rich, and so very clever, and really so nice looking that you
ought to share yourself with somebody. Gertrude would be only too
happy.

Trefusis grinned and shook his head, slowly but emphatically.

"I suppose _I_ should have no chance," continued Agatha
pathetically.

"I should be delighted, of course," he replied with simulated
confusion, but with a lurking gleam in his eye that might have
checked her, had she noticed it.

"I am very sure you shan't," said Agatha, after an incredulous
pause, springing up and gathering her skirt as if to run away.
"You do not suppose I was in earnest, do you?"

"Undoubtedly I do. _I_ am in earnest."

Agatha hesitated, uncertain whether he might not be playing with
her as she had just been playing with him. "Take care," she said.
"I may change my mind and be in earnest, too; and then how will
you feel, Mr. Trefusis?"

"I think we had better drop the joke. It was in rather bad taste,
and I should not have made it, perhaps."

"It would be an execrable joke; therefore I have no intention of
regarding it as one. You shall be held to your offer, Agatha. Are
you in love with me?"

"Not in the least. Not the very smallest bit in the world. I do
not know anybody with whom I am less in love or less likely to be
in love."

"Then you must marry me. If you were in love with me, I should
run away. My sainted Henrietta adored me, and I proved unworthy
of adorationthough I was immensely flattered."

"Yes; exactly! The way you treated your first wife ought to be
sufficient to warn any woman against becoming your second."

"Any woman who loved me, you mean. But you do not love me, and if
I run away you will have the advantage of being rid of me. Our
settlements can be drawn so as to secure you half my fortune in
such an event."

"You will never have a chance of running away from me."

"I shall not want to. I am not so squeamish as I was. No; I do
not think I shall run away from you."

"I do not think so either."

"Well, when shall we be married?"

"Never," said Agatha, and fled. But before she had gone a step he
caught her.

"Don't," she said breathlessly. "Take your arm away. How dare
you?"

He released her and shut the door of the conservatory. "Now," he
said, "if you want to run away you will have to run in the open."

"You are very impertinent. Let me go in immediately."

"Do you want me to beg you to marry me after you have offered to
do it freely?"

"But I was only joking; I don't care for you," she said, looking
round for an outlet.

"Agatha," he said, with grim patience, " half an hour ago I had
no more intention of marrying you than of making a voyage to the
moon. But when you made the suggestion I felt all its force in an
instant, and now nothing will satisfy me but your keeping your
word. Of all the women I know, you are the only one not quite a
fool."

"I should be a great fool if"

"If you married me, you were going to say; but I don't think so.
I am the only man, not quite an ass, of your acquaintance. I know
my value, and yours. And I loved you long ago, when I had no
right to."

Agatha frowned. "No," she said. "There is no use in saying
anything more about it. It is out of the question."

"Come, don't be vindictive. I was more sincere then than you
were. But that has nothing to do with the present. You have spent
our renewed acquaintance on the defensive against me, retorting
upon me, teasing and tempting me. Be generous for once, and say
Yes with a good will."

"Oh, I NEVER tempted you," cried Agatha. "I did not. It is not
true." He said nothing, but offered his hand. "No; go away; I
will not." He persisted, and she felt her power of resistance
suddenly wane. Terror-stricken, she said hastily, "There is not
the least use in bothering me; I will tell you nothing to-day."

"Promise me on your honor that you will say Yes to-morrow, and I
will leave you in peace until then."

"I will not."

"The deuce take your sex," he said plaintively.

"You know my mind now, and I have to stand here coquetting
because you don't know your own. If I cared for my comfort I
should remain a bachelor."

"I advise you to do so," she said, stealing backward towards the
door. "You are a very interesting widower. A wife would spoil
you. Consider the troubles of domesticity, too."

"I like troubles. They strengthenAha!" (she had snatched at the
knob of the door, and he swiftly put his hand on hers and stayed
her). "Not yet, if you please. Can you not speak out like a
womanlike a man, I mean? You may withhold a bone from Max until
he stands on his hind legs to beg for it, but you should not
treat me like a dog. Say Yes frankly, and do not keep me
begging."

"What in the world do you want to marry me for?"

"Because I was made to carry a house on my shoulders, and will do
so. I want to do the best I can for myself, and I shall never
have such a chance again. And I cannot help myself, and don't
know why; that is the plain truth of the matter. You will marry
someone some day." She shook her head. "Yes, you will. Why not
marry me?"

Agatha bit her nether lip, looked ruefully at the ground, and,
after a long pause, said reluctantly, "Very well. But mind, I
think you are acting very foolishly, and if you are disappointed
afterwards, you must not blame ME."

"I take the risk of my bargain," he said, releasing her hand, and
leaning against the door as he took out his pocket diary. "You
will have to take the risk of yours, which I hope may not prove
the worse of the two. This is the seventeenth of June. What date
before the twenty-fourth of July will suit you?"

"You mean the twenty-fourth of July next year, I presume?"

"No; I mean this year. I am going abroad on that date, married or
not, to attend a conference at Geneva, and I want you to come
with me. I will show you a lot of places and things that you have
never seen before. It is your right to name the day, but you have
no serious business to provide for, and I have."

"But you don't know all the things I shallI should have to
provide. You had better wait until you come back from the
continent."

"There is nothing to be provided on your part but settlements and
your trousseau. The trousseau is all nonsense; and Jansenius
knows me of old in the matter of settlements. I got married in
six weeks before."

"Yes," said Agatha sharply, "but I am not Henrietta."

"No, thank Heaven," he assented placidly.

Agatha was struck with remorse. "That was a vile thing for me to
say," she said; "and for you too."

"Whatever is true is to the purpose, vile or not. Will you come
to Geneva on the twenty-fourth?"

"ButI really was not thinking when II did not intend to say
that I wouldI"

"I know. You will come if we are married."

"Yes. IF we are married."

"We shall be married. Do not write either to your mother or
Jansenius until I ask you."

"I don't intend to. I have nothing to write about."

"Wretch that you are! And do not be jealous if you catch me
making love to Lady Brandon. I always do so; she expects it."

"You may make love to whom you please. It is no concern of mine."

"Here comes the wagonette with Lady Brandon and Gerand Miss
Lindsay. I mustn't call her Gertrude now except when you are not
by. Before they interrupt us, let me remind you of the three
points we are agreed upon. I love you. You do not love me. We are
to be married before the twenty-fourth of next month. Now I must
fly to help her ladyship to alight."

He hastened to the house door, at which the wagonette had just
stopped. Agatha, bewildered, and ashamed to face her friends,
went in through the conservatory, and locked herself in her room.

Trefusis went into the library with Gertrude whilst Lady Brandon
loitered in the hall to take off her gloves and ask questions of
the servants. When she followed, she found the two standing
together at the window. Gertrude was listening to him with the
patient expression she now often wore when he talked. He was
smiling, but it struck Jane that he was not quite at ease. "I was
just beginning to tell Miss Lindsay," he said, "of an
extraordinary thing that has happened during your absence."

"I know," exclaimed Jane, with sudden conviction. "The heater in
the conservatory has cracked."

"Possibly," said Trefusis; "but, if so, I have not heard of it."

"If it hasn't cracked, it will," said Jane gloomily. Then,
assuming with some effort an interest in Trefusis's news, she
added: "Well, what has happened?"

"I was chatting with Miss Wylie just now, when a singular idea
occurred to us. We discussed it for some time; and the upshot is
that we are to be married before the end of next month."

Jane reddened and stared at him; and he looked keenly back at
her. Gertrude, though unobserved, did not suffer her expression
of patient happiness to change in the least; but a greenish-white
color suddenly appeared in her face, and only gave place very
slowly to her usual complexion.

"Do you mean to say that you are going to marry AGATHA?" said
Lady Brandon incredulously, after a pause.

"Yes. I had no intention of doing so when I last saw you or I
should have told you."

"I never heard of such a thing in my life! You fell in love with
one another in five minutes, I suppose."

"Good Heavens, no! we are not in love with one another. Can you
believe that I would marry for such a frivolous reason? No. The
subject turned up accidentally, and the advantage of a match
between us struck me forcibly. I was fortunate enough to convert
her to my opinion."

"Yes; she wanted a lot of pressing, I dare say," said Jane,
glancing at Gertrude, who was smiling unmeaningly.

"As you imply," said Trefusis coolly, "her reluctance may have
been affected, and she only too glad to get such a charming
husband. Assuming that to be the case, she dissembled remarkably
well."

Gertrude took off her bonnet, and left the room without speaking.

"This is my revenge upon you for marrying Brandon," he said then,
approaching Jane.

"Oh, yes," she retorted ironically. "I believe all that, of
course."

"You have the same security for its truth as for that of all the
foolish things I confess to you. There!" He pointed to a panel of
looking glass, in which Jane's figure was reflected at full
length.

"I don't see anything to admire," said Jane, looking at herself
with no great favor. "There is plenty of me, if you admire that."

"It is impossible to have too much of a good thing. But I must
not look any more. Though Agatha says she does not love me, I am
not sure that she would be pleased if I were to look for love
from anyone else."

"Says she does not love you! Don't believe her; she has taken
trouble enough to catch you."

"I am flattered. You caught me without any trouble, and yet you
would not have me."

"It is manners to wait to be asked. I think you have treated
Gertrude shamefullyI hope you won't be offended with me for
saying so. I blame Agatha most. She is an awfully double-faced
girl."

"How so?" said Trefusis, surprised. "What has Miss Lindsay to do
with it?"

"You know very well."

"I assure you I do not. If you were speaking of yourself I could
understand you."

"Oh, you can get out of it cleverly, like all men; but you can't
hoodwink me. You shouldn't have pretended to like Gertrude when
you were really pulling a cord with Agatha. And she, too,
pretending to flirt with Sir Charlesas if he would care
twopence for her!"

"You misunderstood us, Lady Brandon; Miss Lindsay knows better.
Remember, too, that this proposal of mine was quite
unpremeditated. This morning I had no tender thoughts of anyone
except one whom it would be improper to name."

"Oh, that is all talk. It won't do now."

"I will talk no more at present. I must be off to the village to
telegraph to my solicitor. If I meet Erskine I will tell him the
good news."

"He will be delighted. He thought, as we all did, that you were
cutting him out with Gertrude."

Trefusis smiled, shook his head, and, with a glance of admiring
homage to Jane's charms, went out. Jane was contemplating herself
in the glass when a servant begged her to come and speak to
Master Charles and Miss Fanny. She hurried upstairs to the
nursery, where her boy and girl, disputing each other's prior
right to torture the baby, had come to blows. They were somewhat
frightened, but not at all appeased, by Jane's entrance. She
scolded, coaxed, threatened, bribed, quoted Dr. Watts, appealed
to the nurse and then insulted her, demanded of the children
whether they loved one another, whether they loved mamma, and
whether they wanted a right good whipping. At last, exasperated
by her own inability to restore order, she seized the baby, which
had cried incessantly throughout, and, declaring that it was
doing it on purpose and should have something real to cry for,
gave it an exemplary smacking, and ordered the others to bed. The
boy, awed by the fate of his infant brother, offered, by way of
compromise, to be good if Miss Wylie would come and play with
him, a proposal which provoked from his jealous mother a box on
the ear that sent him howling to his cot. Then she left the room,
pausing on the threshold to remark that if she heard another
sound from them that day, they might expect the worst from her.
On descending, heated and angry, to the drawing-room, she found
Agatha there alone, looking out of window as if the landscape
were especially unsatisfactory this time.

"Selfish little beasts!" exclaimed Jane, making a miniature
whirlwind with her skirts as she came in. "Charlie is a perfect
little fiend. He spends all his time thinking how he can annoy
me. Ugh! He's just like his father."

"Thank you, my dear," said Sir Charles from the doorway.

Jane laughed. "I knew you were there," she said. "Where's
Gertrude?"

"She has gone out," said Sir Charles.

"Nonsense! She has only just come in from driving with me."

"I do not know what you mean by nonsense," said Sir Charles,
chafing. " I saw her walking along the Riverside Road. I was in
the village road, and she did not see me. She seemed in a hurry."

"I met her on the stairs and spoke to her," said Agatha, "but she
didn't hear me."

"I hope she is not going to throw herself into the river," said
Jane. Then, turning to her husband, she added: "Have you heard
the news?"

"The only news I have heard is from this paper," said Sir
Charles, taking out a journal and flinging it on the table.
"There is a paragraph in it stating that I have joined some
infernal Socialistic league, and I am told that there is an
article in the 'Times' on the spread of Socialism, in which my
name is mentioned. This is all due to Trefusis; and I think he
has played me a most dishonorable trick. I will tell him so, too,
when next I see him."

"You had better be careful what you say of him before Agatha,"
said Jane. "Oh, you need not be alarmed, Agatha; I know all about
it. He told us in the library. We went out this morningGertrude
and Iand when we came back we found Mr. Trefusis and Agatha
talking very lovingly to one another on the conservatory steps,
newly engaged."

"Indeed!" said Sir Charles, disconcerted and displeased, but
trying to smile. "I may then congratulate you, Miss Wylie?"

"You need not," said Agatha, keeping her countenance as well as
she could. "It was only a joke. At least it came about in a jest.
He has no right to say that we are engaged."

"Stuff and nonsense," said Jane. "That won't do, Agatha. He has
gone off to telegraph to his solicitor. He is quite in earnest."

"I am a great fool," said Agatha, sitting down and twisting her
hands perplexedly. "I believe I said something; but I really did
not intend to. He surprised me into speaking before I knew what I
was saying. A pretty mess I have got myself into!"

"I am glad you have been outwitted at last," said Jane, laughing
spitefully. "You never had any pity for me when I could not think
of the proper thing to say at a moment's notice."

Agatha let the taunt pass unheeded. Her gaze wandered anxiously,
and at last settled appealingly upon Sir Charles. "What shall I
do?" she said to him.

"Well, Miss Wylie," he said gravely, "if you did not mean to
marry him you should not have promised. I don't wish to be
unsympathetic, and I know that it is very hard to get rid of
Trefusis when he makes up his mind to act something out of you,
but still"

"Never mind her," said Jane, interrupting him. "She wants to
marry him just as badly as he wants to marry her. You would be
preciously disappointed if he cried off, Agatha; for all your
interesting reluctance."

"That is not so, really," said Agatha earnestly. "I wish I had
taken time to think about it. I suppose he has told everybody by
this time."

"May we then regard it as settled?" said Sir Charles.

"Of course you may," said Jane contemptuously.

"Pray allow Miss Wylie to speak for herself, Jane. I confess I do
not understand why you are still in doubtif you have really
engaged yourself to him."

"I suppose I am in for it," said Agatha. "I feel as if there were
some fatal objection, if I could only remember what it is. I wish
I had never seen him."

Sir Charles was puzzled. "I do not understand ladies' ways in
these matters," he said. "However, as there seems to be no doubt
that you and Trefusis are engaged, I shall of course say nothing
that would make it unpleasant for him to visit here; but I must
say that he hasto say the leastbeen inconsiderate to me
personally. I signed a paper at his house on the implicit
understanding that it was strictly private, and now he has
trumpeted it forth to the whole world, and publicly associated my
name not only with his own, but with those of persons of whom I
know nothing except that I would rather not be connected with
them in any way."

"What does it matter?" said Jane. "Nobody cares twopence."

"_I_ care," said Sir Charles angrily. "No sensible person can
accuse me of exaggerating my own importance because I value my
reputation sufficiently to object to my approval being publicly
cited in support of a cause with which I have no sympathy."

"Perhaps Mr. Trefusis has had nothing to do with it," said
Agatha. "The papers publish whatever they please, don't they?"

"I am not speaking ill of him," said Sir Charles, before Agatha
could retort. "It is a mere matter of feeling, and I should not
have mentioned it had I known the altered relations between him
and Miss Wylie."

"Pray don't speak of them," said Agatha. "I have a mind to run
away by the next train."

Sir Charles, to change the subject, suggested a duet.

Meanwhile Erskine, returning through the village from his morning
ride, had met Trefusis, and attempted to pass him with a nod. But
Trefusis called to him to stop, and he dismounted reluctantly.

"Just a word to say that I am going to be married," said
Trefusis.

"To?" Erskine could not add Gertrude's name.

"To one of our friends at the Beeches. Guess to which."

"To Miss Lindsay, I presume."

"What in the fiend's name has put it into all your heads that
Miss Lindsay and I are particularly attached to one another?"
exclaimed Trefusis. "YOU have always appeared to me to be the man
for Miss Lindsay. I am going to marry Miss Wylie."

"Really!" exclaimed Erskine, with a sensation of suddenly thawing
after a bitter frost.

"Of course. And now, Erskine, you have the advantage of being a
poor man. Do not let that splendid girl marry for money. If you
go further you are likely to fare worse; and so is she." Then he
nodded and walked away, leaving the other staring after him.

"If he has jilted her, he is a scoundrel," said Erskine. "I am
sorry I didn't tell him so."

He mounted and rode slowly along the Riverside Road, partly
suspecting Trefusis of some mystification, but inclining to
believe in him, and, in any case, to take his advice as to
Gertrude. The conversation he had overheard in the avenue still
perplexed him. He could not reconcile it with Trefusis's
profession of disinterestedness towards her.

His bicycle carried him noiselessly on its india-rubber tires to
the place by which the hemlock grew and there he saw Gertrude
sitting on the low earthen wall that separated the field from the
road. Her straw bag, with her scissors in it, lay beside her. Her
fingers were interlaced, and her hands rested, palms downwards,
on her knee. Her expression was rather vacant, and so little
suggestive of any serious emotion that Erskine laughed as he
alighted close to her.

"Are you tired?" he said.

"No," she replied, not startled, and smiling mechanicallyan
unusual condescension on her part.

"Indulging in a day-dream?"

"No." She moved a little to one side and concealed the basket
with her dress.

He began to fear that something was wrong. "Is it possible that
you have ventured among those poisonous plants again?" he said.
"Are you ill?"

"I beg your pardon," he said, snubbed. "I thoughtDon't you
think it dangerous to sit on that damp wall?"

"It is not damp. It is crumbling into dust with dryness." An
unnatural laugh, with which she concluded, intensified his
uneasiness.

He began a sentence, stopped, and to gain time to recover
himself, placed his bicycle in the opposite ditch; a proceeding
which she witnessed with impatience, as it indicated his
intention to stay and talk. She, however, was the first to speak;
and she did so with a callousness that shocked him.

"Have you heard the news?"

"What news?"

"About Mr. Trefusis and Agatha. They are engaged."

"So Trefusis told me. I met him just now in the village. I was
very glad to hear it."

"Of course."

"But I had a special reason for being glad."

"Indeed?"

"I was desperately afraid, before he told me the truth, that he
had other viewsviews that might have proved fatal to my dearest
hopes."

Gertrude frowned at him, and the frown roused him to brave her.
He lost his self-command, already shaken by her strange behavior.
"You know that I love you, Miss Lindsay," he said. "It may not be
a perfect love, but, humanly speaking, it is a true one. I almost
told you so that day when we were in the billiard room together;
and I did a very dishonorable thing the same evening. When you
were speaking to Trefusis in the avenue I was close to you, and I
listened."

"Then you heard him," cried Gertrude vehemently. "You heard him
swear that he was in earnest."

"Yes," said Erskine, trembling, "and I thought he meant in
earnest in loving you. You can hardly blame me for that: I was in
love myself; and love is blind and jealous. I never hoped again
until he told me that he was to be married to Miss Wylie. May I
speak to you, now that I know I was mistaken, or that you have
changed your mind?"

"Or that he has changed his mind," said Gertrude scornfully.

Erskine, with a new anxiety for her sake, checked himself. Her
dignity was dear to him, and he saw that her disappointment had
made her reckless of it. "Do not say anything to me now, Miss
Lindsay, lest"

"What have I said? What have I to say?"

"Nothing, except on my own affairs. I love you dearly."

She made an impatient movement, as if that were a very
insignificant matter.

"You believe me, I hope," he said, timidly.

Gertrude made an effort to recover her habitual ladylike reserve,
but her energy failed before she had done more than raise her
head. She relapsed into her listless attitude, and made a faint
gesture of intolerance.

"You cannot be quite indifferent to being loved," he said,
becoming more nervous and more urgent. "Your existence
constitutes all my happiness. I offer you my services and
devotion. I do not ask any reward." (He was now speaking very
quickly and almost inaudibly.) "You may accept my love without
returning it. I do not wantseek to make a bargain. If you need
a friend you may be able to rely on me more confidently because
you know I love you."

"Oh, you think so," said Gertrude, interrupting him; "but you
will get over it. I am not the sort of person that men fall in
love with. You will soon change your mind."

"Not the sort! Oh, how little you know!" he said, becoming
eloquent. "I have had plenty of time to change, but I am as fixed
as ever. If you doubt, wait and try me. But do not be rough with
me. You pain me more than you can imagine when you are hasty or
indifferent. I am in earnest."

"Ha, ha! That is easily said."

"Not by me. I change in my judgment of other people according to
my humor, but I believe steadfastly in your goodness and
beautyas if you were an angel. I am in earnest in my love for
you as I am in earnest for my own life, which can only be
perfected by your aid and influence."

"You are greatly mistaken if you suppose that I am an angel."

"You are wrong to mistrust yourself; but it is what I owe to you
and not what I expect from you that I try to express by speaking
of you as an angel. I know that you are not an angel to yourself.
But you are to me."

She sat stubbornly silent.

"I will not press you for an answer now. I am content that you
know my mind at last. Shall we return together?"

She looked round slowly at the hemlock, and from that to the
river. Then she took up her basket, rose, and prepared to go, as
if under compulsion.

"Do you want any more hemlock?" he said. "If so, I will pluck
some for you."

"I wish you would let me alone," she said, with sudden anger. She
added, a little ashamed of herself, "I have a headache."

"I am very sorry," he said, crestfallen.

"It is only that I do not wish to be spoken to. It hurts my head
to listen."

He meekly took his bicycle from the ditch and wheeled it along
beside her to the Beeches without another word. They went in
through the conservatory, and parted in the dining-room. Before
leaving him she said with some remorse, "I did not mean to be
rude, Mr. Erskine."

He flushed, murmured something, and attempted to kiss her hand.
But she snatched it away and went out quickly. He was stung by
this repulse, and stood mortifying himself by thinking of it
until he was disturbed by the entrance of a maid-servant.
Learning from her that Sir Charles was in the billiard room, he
joined him there, and asked him carelessly if he had heard the
news.

"About Miss Wylie?" said Sir Charles. "Yes, I should think so. I
believe the whole country knows it, though they have not been
engaged three hours. Have you seen these?" And he pushed a couple
of newspapers across the table.

Erskine had to make several efforts before he could read. " You
were a fool to sign that document," he said. "I told you so at
the time."

"I relied on the fellow being a gentleman," said Sir Charles
warmly. " I do not see that I was a fool. I see that he is a cad,
and but for this business of Miss Wylie's I would let him know my
opinion. Let me tell you, Chester, that he has played fast and
loose with Miss Lindsay. There is a deuce of a row upstairs. She
has just told Jane that she must go home at once; Miss Wylie
declares that she will have nothing to do with Trefusis if Miss
Lindsay has a prior claim to him, and Jane is annoyed at his
admiring anybody except herself. It serves me right; my instinct
warned me against the fellow from the first." Just then luncheon
was announced. Gertrude did not come down. Agatha was silent and
moody. Jane tried to make Erskine describe his walk with
Gertrude, but he baffled her curiosity by omitting from his
account everything except its commonplaces.

"I think her conduct very strange," said Jane. "She insists on
going to town by the four o'clock train. I consider that it's not
polite to me, although she always made a point of her perfect
manners. I never heard of such a thing!"

When they had risen from the table, they went together to the
drawing-room. They had hardly arrived there when Trefusis was
announced, and he was in their presence before they had time to
conceal the expression of consternation his name brought into
their faces.

"I have come to say good-bye," he said. "I find that I must go to
town by the four o'clock train to push my arrangements in person;
the telegrams I have received breathe nothing but delay. Have you
seen the 'Times'?"

"I have indeed," said Sir Charles, emphatically.

"You are in some other paper too, and will be in half-a-dozen
more in the course of the next fortnight. Men who have committed
themselves to an opinion are always in trouble with the
newspapers; some because they cannot get into them, others
because they cannot keep out. If you had put forward a thundering
revolutionary manifesto, not a daily paper would have dared
allude to it: there is no cowardice like Fleet Street cowardice!
I must run off; I have much to do before I start, and it is
getting on for three. Good-bye, Lady Brandon, and everybody."

He shook Jane's hand, dealt nods to the rest rapidly, making no
distinction in favor of Agatha, and hurried away. They stared
after him for a moment and then Erskine ran out and went
downstairs two steps at a time. Nevertheless he had to run as far
as the avenue before he overtook his man.

"Trefusis," he said breathlessly, "you must not go by the four
o'clock train."

"Why not?"

"Miss Lindsay is going to town by it."

"So much the better, my dear boy; so much the better. You are not
jealous of me now, are you?"

"Look here, Trefusis. I don't know and I don't ask what there has
been between you and Miss Lindsay, but your engagement has quite
upset her, and she is running away to London in consequence. If
she hears that you are going by the same train she will wait
until to-morrow, and I believe the delay would be very
disagreeable. Will you inflict that additional pain upon her?"

Trefusis, evidently concerned, looking doubtfully at Erskine, and
pondered for a moment. "I think you are on a wrong scent about
this," he said. "My relations with Miss Lindsay were not of a
sentimental kind. Have you said anything to heron your own
account, I mean?"

"I have spoken to her on both accounts, and I know from her own
lips that I am right."

Trefusis uttered a low whistle.

"It is not the first time I have had the evidence of my senses in
the matter," said Erskine significantly. " Pray think of it
seriously, Trefusis. Forgive my telling you frankly that nothing
but your own utter want of feeling could excuse you for the way
in which you have acted towards her."

Trefusis smiled. "Forgive me in turn for my inquisitiveness," he
said. "What does she say to your suit?"

Erskine hesitated, showing by his manner that he thought Trefusis
had no right to ask the question. "She says nothing," he
answered.

"Hm!" said Trefusis. "Well, you may rely on me as to the train.
There is my hand upon it."

"Thank you," said Erskine fervently. They shook hands and parted,
Trefusis walking away with a grin suggestive of anything but good
faith.

CHAPTER XVII

Gertrude, unaware of the extent to which she had already betrayed
her disappointment, believed that anxiety for her father's
health, which she alleged as the motive of her sudden departure,
was an excuse plausible enough to blind her friends to her
overpowering reluctance to speak to Agatha or endure her
presence; to her fierce shrinking from the sort of pity usually
accorded to a jilted woman; and, above all, to her dread of
meeting Trefusis. She had for some time past thought of him as an
upright and perfect man deeply interested in her. Yet,
comparatively liberal as her education had been, she had no idea
of any interest of man in woman existing apart from a desire to
marry. He had, in his serious moments, striven to make her
sensible of the baseness he saw in her worldliness, flattering
her by his apparent convictionwhich she sharedthat she was
capable of a higher life. Almost in the same breath, a strain of
gallantry which was incorrigible in him, and to which his humor
and his tenderness to women whom he liked gave variety and charm,
would supervene upon his seriousness with a rapidity which her
far less flexible temperament could not follow. Hence she,
thinking him still in earnest when he had swerved into florid
romance, had been dangerously misled. He had no conscientious
scruples in his love-making, because he was unaccustomed to
consider himself as likely to inspire love in women; and Gertrude
did not know that her beauty gave to an hour spent alone with her
a transient charm which few men of imagination and address could
resist. She, who had lived in the marriage market since she had
left school, looked upon love-making as the most serious business
of life. To him it was only a pleasant sort of trifling, enhanced
by a dash of sadness in the reflection that it meant so little.

Of the ceremonies attending her departure, the one that cost her
most was the kiss she felt bound to offer Agatha. She had been
jealous of her at college, where she had esteemed herself the
better bred of the two; but that opinion had hardly consoled her
for Agatha's superior quickness of wit, dexterity of hand,
audacity, aptness of resource, capacity for forming or following
intricate associations of ideas, and consequent power to dazzle
others. Her jealousy of these qualities was now barbed by the
knowledge that they were much nearer akin than her own to those
of Trefusis. It mattered little to her how she appeared to
herself in comparison with Agatha. But it mattered the whole
world (she thought) that she must appear to Trefusis so slow,
stiff, cold, and studied, and that she had no means to make him
understand that she was not really so. For she would not admit
the justice of impressions made by what she did not intend to do,
however habitually she did it. She had a theory that she was not
herself, but what she would have liked to be. As to the one
quality in which she had always felt superior to Agatha, and
which she called " good breeding," Trefusis had so far destroyed
her conceit in that, that she was beginning to doubt whether it
was not her cardinal defect.

She could not bring herself to utter a word as she embraced her
schoolfellow; and Agatha was tongue-tied too. But there was much
remorseful tenderness in the feelings that choked them. Their
silence would have been awkward but for the loquacity of Jane,
who talked enough for all three. Sir Charles was without, in the
trap, waiting to drive Gertrude to the station. Erskine
intercepted her in the hall as she passed out, told her that he
should be desolate when she was gone, and begged her to remember
him, a simple petition which moved her a little, and caused her
to note that his dark eyes had a pleading eloquence which she had
observed before in the kangaroos at the Zoological Society's
gardens.

On the way to the train Sir Charles worried the horse in order to
be excused from conversation on the sore subject of his guest's
sudden departure. He had made a few remarks on the skittishness
of young ponies, and on the weather, and that was all until they
reached the station, a pretty building standing in the open
country, with a view of the river from the platform. There were
two flies waiting, two porters, a bookstall, and a refreshment
room with a neglected beauty pining behind the bar. Sir Charles
waited in the booking office to purchase a ticket for Gertrude,
who went through to the platform. The first person she saw there
was Trefusis, close beside her.

"I am going to town by this train, Gertrude," he said quickly.
"Let me take charge of you. I have something to say, for I hear
that some mischief has been made between us which must be stopped
at once. You"

Just then Sir Charles came out, and stood amazed to see them in
conversation.

"It happens that I am going by this train," said Trefusis. "I
will see after Miss Lindsay."

"Miss Lindsay has her maid with her," said Sir Charles, almost
stammering, and looking at Gertrude, whose expression was
inscrutable.

"We can get into the Pullman car," said Trefusis. "There we shall
be as private as in a corner of a crowded drawing-room. I may
travel with you, may I not?" he said, seeing Sir Charles's
disturbed look, and turning to her for express permission.

She felt that to deny him would be to throw away her last chance
of happiness. Nevertheless she resolved to do it, though she
should die of grief on the way to London. As she raised her head
to forbid him the more emphatically, she met his gaze, which was
grave and expectant. For an instant she lost her presence of
mind, and in that instant said, " Yes. I shall be very glad."

"Well, if that is the case," said Sir Charles, in the tone of one
whose sympathy had been alienated by an unpardonable outrage, "
there can be no use in my waiting. I leave you in the hands of
Mr. Trefusis. Good-bye, Miss Lindsay."

Gertrude winced. Unkindness from a man usually kind proved hard
to bear at parting. She was offering him her hand in silence when
Trefusis said:

"Wait and see us off. If we chance to be killed on the
journeywhich is always probable on an English railwayyou will
reproach yourself afterwards if you do not see the last of us.
Here is the train; it will not delay you a minute. Tell Erskine
that you saw me here; that I have not forgotten my promise, and
that he may rely on me. Get in at this end, Miss Lindsay."

"My maid," said Gertrude hesitating; for she had not intended to
travel so expensively. "She"

"She comes with us to take care of me; I have tickets for
everybody," said Trefusis, handing the woman in.

"But"

"Take your seats, please," said the guard. "Going by the train,
sir?"

"Good-bye, Sir Charles. Give my love to Lady Brandon, and Agatha,
and the dear children; and thanks so much for a very pleasant"
Here the train moved off, and Sir Charles, melting, smiled and
waved his hat until he caught sight of Trefusis looking back at
him with a grin which seemed, under the circumstances, so
Satanic, that he stopped as if petrified in the midst of his
gesticulations, and stood with his arm out like a semaphore.

The drive home restored him somewhat, but he wee still full of
his surprise when he rejoined Agatha, his wife, and Erskine in
the drawing-room at the Beeches. The moment he entered, he said
without preface, "She has gone off with Trefusis."

Erskine, who had been reading, started up, clutching his book as
if about to hurl it at someone, and cried, "Was he at the train?"

"Yes, and has gone to town by it."

"Then," said Erskine, flinging the book violently on the floor,
"he is a scoundrel and a liar."

"What is the matter?" said Agatha rising, whilst Jane stared
open-mouthed at him.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Wylie, I forgot you. He pledged me his
honor that he would not go by that train. I will." He hurried
from the room. Sir Charles rushed after him, and overtook him at
the foot of the stairs.

"Where are you going? What do you want to do?"

"I will follow the train and catch it at the next station. I can
do it on my bicycle."

"Nonsense! you're mad. They have thirty-five minutes start; and
the train travels forty-five miles an hour."

Erskine sat down on the stairs and gazed blankly at the opposite
wall.

"You must have mistaken him," said Sir Charles. "He told me to
tell you that he had not forgotten his promise, and that you may
rely on him."

"What is the matter?" said Agatha, coming down, followed by Lady
Brandon.

"Miss Wylie," said Erskine, springing up, "he gave me his word
that he would not go by that train when I told him Miss Lindsay
was going by it. He has broken his word and seized the
opportunity I was mad and credulous enough to tell him of. If I
had been in your place, Brandon, I would have strangled him or
thrown him under the wheels sooner than let him go. He has shown
himself in this as in everything else, a cheat, a conspirator, a
man of crooked ways, shifts, tricks, lying sophistries, heartless
selfishness, cruel cynicism" He stopped to catch his breath,
and Sir Charles interposed a remonstrance.

"You are exciting yourself about nothing, Chester. They are in a
Pullman, with her maid and plenty of people; and she expressly
gave him leave to go with her. He asked her the question flatly
before my face, and I must say I thought it a strange thing for
her to consent to. However, she did consent, and of course I was
not in a position to prevent him from going to London if he
pleased. Don't let us have a scene, old man. It can't be helped."

"I am very sorry," said Erskine, hanging his head. "I did not
mean to make a scene. I beg your pardon."

He went away to his room without another word. Sir Charles
followed and attempted to console him, but Erskine caught his
hand, and asked to be left to himself. So Sir Charles returned to
the drawing-room, where his wife, at a loss for once, hardly
ventured to remark that she had never heard of such a thing in
her life.

Agatha kept silence. She had long ago come unconsciously to the
conclusion that Trefusis and she were the only members of the
party at the Beeches who had much common-sense, and this made her
slow to believe that he could be in the wrong and Erskine in the
right in any misunderstanding between them. She had a slovenly
way of summing up as "asses" people whose habits of thought
differed from hers. Of all varieties of man, the minor poet
realized her conception of the human ass most completely, and
Erskine, though a very nice fellow indeed, thoroughly good and
gentlemanly, in her opinion, was yet a minor poet, and therefore
a pronounced ass. Trefusis, on the contrary, was the last man of
her acquaintance whom she would have thought of as a very nice
fellow or a virtuous gentleman; but he was not an a~s, although
he was obstinate in his Socialistic fads. She had indeed
suspected him of weakness almost asinine with respect to
Gertrude, but then all men were asses in their dealings with
women, and since he had transferred his weakness to her own
account it no longer seemed to need justification. And now, as
her concern for Erskine, whom she pitied, wore off, she began to
resent Trefusis's journey with Gertrude as an attack on her
recently acquired monopoly of him. There was an air of
aristocratic pride about Gertrude which Agatha had formerly
envied, and which she still feared Trefusis might mistake for an
index of dignity and refinement. Agatha did not believe that her
resentment was the common feeling called jealousy, for she still
deemed herself unique, but it gave her a sense of meanness that
did not improve her spirits.

The dinner was dull. Lady Brandon spoke in an undertone, as if
someone lay dead in the next room. Erskine was depressed by the
consciousness of having lost his head and acted foolishly in the
afternoon. Sir Charles did not pretend to ignore the suspense
they were all in pending intelligence of the journey to London;
he ate and drank and said nothing. Agatha, disgusted with herself
and with Gertrude, and undecided whether to be disgusted with
Trefusis or to trust him affectionately, followed the example of
her host. After dinner she accompanied him in a series of songs
by Schubert. This proved an aggravation instead of a relief. Sir
Charles, excelling in the expression of melancholy, preferred
songs of that character; and as his musical ideas, like those of
most Englishmen, were founded on what he had heard in church in
his childhood, his style was oppressively monotonous. Agatha took
the first excuse that presented itself to leave the piano. Sir
Charles felt that his performance had been a failure, and
remarked, after a cough or two, that he had caught a touch of
cold returning from the station. Erskine sat on a sofa with his
head drooping, and his palms joined and hanging downward between
his knees. Agatha stood at the window, looking at the late summer
afterglow. Jane yawned, and presently broke the silence.

"You look exactly as you used at school, Agatha. I could almost
fancy us back again in Number Six."

Agatha shook her head.

"Do I ever look like thatlike myself, as I used to be?"

"Never," said Agatha emphatically, turning and surveying the
figure of which Miss Carpenter had been the unripe antecedent.

"But why?" said Jane querulously. "I don't see why I shouldn't. I
am not so changed."

"You have become an exceedingly fine woman, Jane," said Agatha
gravely, and then, without knowing why, turned her attentive gaze
upon Sir Charles, who bore it uneasily, and left the room. A
minute later he returned with two buff envelopes in his hand.

"A telegram for you, Miss Wylie, and one for Chester." Erskine
started up, white with vague fears. Agatha's color went, and came
again with increased richness as she read:

"I have arrived safe and ridiculously happy. Read a thousand
things between the lines. I will write tomorrow. Good night."

"You may read it," said Agatha, handing it to Jane.

"Very pretty," said Jane. "A shilling's worth of
attentionexactly twenty words! He may well call himself an
economist."

Suddenly a crowing laugh from Erskine caused them to turn and
stare at him. "What nonsense!" he said, blushing. "What a fellow
he is! I don't attach the slightest importance to this."

Agatha took a corner of his telegram and pulled it gently.

"No, no," he said, holding it tightly. "It is too absurd. I don't
think I ought"

Agatha gave a decisive pull, and read the message aloud. It was
from Trefusis, thus:

"I forgive your thoughts since Brandon's return. Write her
to-night, and follow your letter to receive an affirmative answer
in person. I promised that you might rely on me. She loves you."

"I never heard of such a thing in my life," said Jane. "Never!"

"He is certainly a most unaccountable man," said Sir Charles.

"I am glad, for my own sake, that he is not so black as he is
painted," said Agatha. "You may believe every word of it, Mr.
Erskine. Be sure to do as he tells you. He is quite certain to be
right."

"Pooh!" said Erskine, crumpling the telegram and thrusting it
into his pocket as if it were not worth a second thought.
Presently he slipped away, and did not reappear. When they were
about to retire, Sir Charles asked a servant where he was.

"In the library, Sir Charles; writing."

They looked significantly at one another and went to bed without
disturbing him.

CHAPTER XVIII

When Gertrude found herself beside Trefusis in the Pullman, she
wondered how she came to be travelling with him against her
resolution, if not against her will. In the presence of two women
scrutinizing her as if they suspected her of being there with no
good purpose, a male passenger admiring her a little further off,
her maid reading Trefusis's newspapers just out of earshot, an
uninterested country gentleman looking glumly out of window, a
city man preoccupied with the "Economist," and a polite lady who
refrained from staring but not from observing, she felt that she
must not make a scene; yet she knew he had not come there to hold
an ordinary conversation. Her doubt did not last long. He began
promptly, and went to the point at once.

"What do you think of this engagement of mine?"

This was more than she could bear calmly. "What is it to me?" she
said indignantly. "I have nothing to do with it."

"Nothing! You are a cold friend to me then. I thought you one of
the surest I possessed."

She moved as if about to look at him, but checked herself, closed
her lips, and fixed her eyes on the vacant seat before her. The
reproach he deserved was beyond her power of expression.

"I cling to that conviction still, in spite of Miss Lindsay's
indifference to my affairs. But I confess I hardly know how to
bring you into sympathy with me in this matter. In the first
place, you have never been married, I have. In the next, you are
much younger than I, in more respects than that of years. Very
likely half your ideas on the subject are derived from fictions
in which happy results are tacked on to conditions very
ill-calculated to produce themwhich in real life hardly ever do
produce them. If our friendship were a chapter in a novel, what
would be the upshot of it? Why, I should marry you, or you break
your heart at my treachery."

Gertrude moved her eyes as if she had some intention of taking to
flight.

"But our relations being those of real lifefar sweeter, after
allI never dreamed of marrying you, having gained and enjoyed
your friendship without that eye to business which our nineteenth
century keeps open even whilst it sleeps. You, being equally
disinterested in your regard for me, do not think of breaking
your heart, but you are, I suppose, a little hurt at my
apparently meditating and resolving on such a serious step as
marriage with Agatha without confiding my intention to you. And
you punish me by telling me that you have nothing to do with it
that it is nothing to you. But I never meditated the step, and so
had nothing to conceal from you. It was conceived and executed in
less than a minute. Although my first marriage was a silly love
match and a failure, I have always admitted to myself that I
should marry again. A bachelor is a man who shirks
responsibilities and duties; I seek them, and consider it my
duty, with my monstrous superfluity of means, not to let the
individualists outbreed me. Still, I was in no hurry, having
other things to occupy me, and being fond of my bachelor freedom,
and doubtful sometimes whether I had any right to bring more
idlers into the world for the workers to feed. Then came the
usual difficulty about the lady. I did not want a helpmeet; I can
help myself. Nor did I expect to be loved devotedly, for the race
has not yet evolved a man lovable on thorough acquaintance; even
my self-love is neither thorough nor constant. I wanted a genial
partner for domestic business, and Agatha struck me quite
suddenly as being the nearest approach to what I desired that I
was likely to find in the marriage market, where it is extremely
hard to suit oneself, and where the likeliest bargains are apt to
be snapped up by others if one hesitates too long in the hope of
finding something better. I admire Agatha's courage and
capability, and believe I shall be able to make her like me, and
that the attachment so begun may turn into as close a union as is
either healthy or necessary between two separate individuals. I
may mistake her character, for I do not know her as I know you,
and have scarcely enough faith in her as yet to tell her such
things as I have told you. Still, there is a consoling dash of
romance in the transaction. Agatha has charm. Do you not think
so?"

Gertrude's emotion was gone. She replied with cool scorn, "Very
romantic indeed. She is very fortunate."

Trefusis half laughed, half sighed with relief to find her so
self-possessed. "It sounds likeand indeed isthe selfish
calculation of a disilluded widower. You would not value such an
offer, or envy the recipient of it?"

"No," said Gertrude with quiet contempt.

"Yet there is some calculation behind every such offer. We marry
to satisfy our needs, and the more reasonable our needs are, the
more likely are we to get them satisfied. I see you are disgusted
with me; I feared as much. You are the sort of woman to admit no
excuse for my marriage except lovepure emotional love,
blindfolding reason."

"I really do not concern myself"

"Do not say so, Gertrude. I watch every step you take with
anxiety; and I do not believe you are indifferent to the
worthiness of my conduct. Believe me, love is an overrated
passion; it would be irremediably discredited but that young
people, and the romancers who live upon their follies, have a
perpetual interest in rehabilitating it. No relation involving
divided duties and continual intercourse between two people can
subsist permanently on love alone. Yet love is not to be despised
when it comes from a fine nature. There is a man who loves you
exactly as you think I ought to love Agathaand as I don't love
her."

Gertrude's emotion stirred again, and her color rose. "You have
no right to say these things now," she said.

"Why may I not plead the cause of another? I speak of Erskine."
Her color vanished, and he continued, "I want you to marry him.
When you are married you will understand me better, and our
friendship, shaken just now, will be deepened; for I dare assure
you, now that you can no longer misunderstand me, that no living
woman is dearer to me than you. So much for the inevitable
selfish reason. Erskine is a poor man, and in his comfortable
povertysave the marklies your salvation from the baseness of
marrying for wealth and position; a baseness of which women of
your class stand in constant peril. They court it; you must shun
it. The man is honorable and loves you; he is young, healthy, and
suitable. What more do you think the world has to offer you?"

"Much more, I hope. Very much more."

"I fear that the names I give things are not romantic enough. He
is a poet. Perhaps he would be a hero if it were possible for a
man to be a hero in this nineteenth century, which will be
infamous in history as a time when the greatest advances in the
power of man over nature only served to sharpen his greed and
make famine its avowed minister. Erskine is at least neither a
gambler nor a slave-driver at first hand; if he lives upon
plundered labor he can no more help himself than I. Do not say
that you hope for much more; but tell me, if you can, what more
you have any chance of getting? Mind, I do not ask what more you
desire; we all desire unutterable things. I ask you what more you
can obtain!"

"I have not found Mr. Erskine such a wonderful person as you seem
to think him."

"He is only a man. Do you know anybody more wonderful?"

"Besides, my family might not approve."

"They most certainly will not. If you wish to please them, you
must sell yourself to some rich vampire of the factories or great
landlord. If you give yourself away to a poor poet who loves you,
their disgust will be unbounded. If a woman wishes to honor her
father and mother to their own satisfaction nowadays she must
dishonor herself."

"I do not understand why you should be so anxious for me to marry
someone else?"

"Someone else?" said Trefusis, puzzled.

"I do not mean someone else," said Gertrude hastily, reddening.
"Why should I marry at all?"

"Why do any of us marry? Why do I marry? It is a function craving
fulfilment. If you do not marry betimes from choice, you will be
driven to do so later on by the importunity of your suitors and
of your family, and by weariness of the suspense that precedes a
definite settlement of oneself. Marry generously. Do not throw
yourself away or sell yourself; give yourself away. Erskine has
as much at stake as you; and yet he offers himself fearlessly."

Gertrude raised her head proudly.

"It is true," continued Trefusis, observing the gesture with some
anger, " that he thinks more highly of you than you deserve; but
you, on the other hand, think too lowly of him. When you marry
him you must save him from a cruel disenchantment by raising
yourself to the level he fancies you have attained. This will
cost you an effort, and the effort will do you good, whether it
fail or succeed. As for him, he will find his just level in your
estimation if your thoughts reach high enough to comprehend him
at that level."

Gertrude moved impatiently.

"What!" he said quickly. "Are my long-winded sacrifices to the
god of reason distasteful? I believe I am involuntarily making
them so because I am jealous of the fellow after all.
Nevertheless I am serious; I want you to get married; though I
shall always have a secret grudge against the man who marries
you. Agatha will suspect me of treason if you don't. Erskine will
be a disappointed man if you don't. You will be moody, wretched,
andand unmarried if you don't."

Gertrude's cheeks flushed at the word jealous, and again at his
mention of Agatha. "And if I do," she said bitterly, "what then?"

"If you do, Agatha's mind will be at ease, Erskine will be happy,
and you! You will have sacrificed yourself, and will have the
happiness which follows that when it is worthily done."

"It is you who have sacrificed me," she said, casting away her
reticence, and looking at him for the first time during the
conversation.

"I know it," he said, leaning towards her and half whispering the
words. "Is not renunciation the beginning and the end of wisdom?
I have sacrificed you rather than profane our friendship by
asking you to share my whole life with me. You are unfit for
that, and I have committed myself to another union, and am
begging you to follow my example, lest we should tempt one
another to a step which would soon prove to you how truly I tell
you that you are unfit. I have never allowed you to roam through
all the chambers of my consciousness, but I keep a sanctuary
there for you alone, and will keep it inviolate for you always.
Not even Agatha shall have the key, she must be content with the
other roomsthe drawing-room, the working-room, the dining-room,
and so forth. They would not suit you; you would not like the
furniture or the guests; after a time you would not like the
master. Will you be content with the sanctuary?" Gertrude bit
her lip; tears came into her eyes. She looked imploringly at him.
Had they been alone, she would have thrown herself into his arms
and entreated him to disregard everything except their strong
cleaving to one another.

"And will you keep a corner of your heart for me?"

She slowly gave him a painful look of acquiescence. "Will you be
brave, and sacrifice yourself to the poor man who loves you? He
will save you from useless solitude, or from a worldly
marriageI cannot bear to think of either as your fate."

"I do not care for Mr. Erskine," she said, hardly able to control
her voice; "but I will marry him if you wish it."

"I do wish it earnestly, Gertrude."

"Then, you have my promise," she said, again with some
bitterness.

"But you will not forget me? Erskine will have all but thata
tender recollectionnothing."

"Can I do more than I have just promised?"

"Perhaps so; but I am too selfish to be able to conceive anything
more generous. Our renunciation will bind us to one another as
our union could never have done."

They exchanged a long look. Then he took out his watch, and began
to speak of the length of their journey, now nearly at an end.
When they arrived in London the first person they recognized on
the platform was Mr. Jansenius.

"Ah! you got my telegram, I see," said Trefusis. "Many thanks for
coming. Wait for me whilst I put this lady into a cab."

When the cab was engaged, and Gertrude, with her maid, stowed
within, he whispered to her hurriedly:

"In spite of all, I have a leaden pain here" (indicating his
heart). "You have been brave, and I have been wise. Do not speak
to me, but remember that we are friends always and deeply."

He touched her hand, and turned to the cabman, directing him
whither to drive. Gertrude shrank back into a corner of the
vehicle as it departed. Then Trefusis, expanding his chest like a
man just released from some cramping drudgery, rejoined Mr.
Jansenius.

"There goes a true woman," he said. "I have been persuading her
to take the very best step open to her. I began by talking sense,
like a man of honor, and kept at it for half an hour, but she
would not listen to me. Then I talked romantic nonsense of the
cheapest sort for five minutes, and she consented with tears in
her eyes. Let us take this hansom. Hi! Belsize Avenue. Yes; you
sometimes have to answer a woman according to her womanishness,
just as you have to answer a fool according to his folly. Have
you ever made up your mind, Jansenius, whether I am an unusually
honest man, or one of the worst products of the social
organization I spend all my energies in assailingan infernal
scoundrel, in short?"

"Now pray do not be absurd," said Mr. Jansenius. "I wonder at a
man of your ability behaving and speaking as you sometimes do."

"I hope a little insincerity, when meant to act as chloroformto
save a woman from feeling a wound to her vanityis excusable.
By-the-bye, I must send a couple of telegrams from the first
post-office we pass. Well, sir, I am going to marry Agatha, as I
sent you word. There was only one other single man and one other
virgin down at Brandon Beeches, and they are as good as engaged.
And so

"'Jack shall have Jill, Nought shall go ill, The man shall have
his mare again; And all shall be well.'"

APPENDIX

LETTER TO THE AUTHOR FROM MR. SIDNEY TREFUSIS.

My Dear Sir: I find that my friends are not quite satisfied with
the account you have given of them in your clever novel entitled
" An Unsocial Socialist." You already understand that I consider
it my duty to communicate my whole history, without reserve, to
whoever may desire to be guided or warned by my experience, and
that I have no sympathy whatever with the spirit in which one of
the ladies concerned recently told you that her affairs were no
business of yours or of the people who read your books. When you
asked my permission some years ago to make use of my story, I at
once said that you would be perfectly justified in giving it the
fullest publicity whether I consented or not, provided only that
you were careful not to falsify it for the sake of artistic
effect. Now, whilst cheerfully admitting that you have done your
best to fulfil that condition, I cannot help feeling that, in
presenting the facts in the guise of fiction, you have, in spite
of yourself, shown them in a false light. Actions described in
novels are judged by a romantic system of morals as fictitious as
the actions themselves. The traditional parts of this system are,
as Cervantes tried to show, for the chief part, barbarous and
obsolete; the modern additions are largely due to the novel
readers and writers of our own centurymost of them
half-educated women,rebelliously slavish, superstitious,
sentimental, full of the intense egotism fostered by their
struggle for personal liberty, and, outside their families, with
absolutely no social sentiment except love. Meanwhile, man,
having fought and won his fight for this personal liberty, only
to find himself a more abject slave than before, is turning with
loathing from his egotist's dream of independence to the
collective interests of society, with the welfare of which he now
perceives his own happiness to be inextricably bound up. But man
in this phase (would that all had reached it!) has not yet
leisure to write or read novels. In noveldom woman still sets the
moral standard, and to her the males, who are in full revolt
against the acceptance of the infatuation of a pair of lovers as
the highest manifestation of the social instinct, and against the
restriction of the affections within the narrow circle of blood
relationship, and of the political sympathies within frontiers,
are to her what she calls heartless brutes. That is exactly what
I have been called by readers of your novel; and that, indeed, is
exactly what I am, judged by the fictitious and feminine standard
of morality. Hence some critics have been able plausibly to
pretend to take the book as a satire on Socialism. It may, for
what I know, have been so intended by you. Whether or no, I am
sorry you made a novel of my story, for the effect has been
almost as if you had misrepresented me from beginning to end.

At the same time, I acknowledge that you have stated the facts,
on the whole, with scrupulous fairness. You have, indeed,
flattered me very strongly by representing me as constantly
thinking of and for other people, whereas the rest think of
themselves alone, but on the other hand you have contradictorily
called me "unsocial," which is certainly the last adjective I
should have expected to find in the neighborhood of my name. I
deny, it is true, that what is now called "society " is society
in any real sense, and my best wish for it is that it may
dissolve too rapidly to make it worth the while of those who are
" not in society "to facilitate its dissolution by violently
pounding it into small pieces. But no reader of "An Unsocial
Socialist " needs to be told how, by the exercise of a certain
considerate tact (which on the outside, perhaps, seems the
opposite of tact), I have contrived to maintain genial terms with
men and women of all classes, even those whose opinions and
political conduct seemed to me most dangerous.

However, I do not here propose to go fully into my own position,
lest I should seem tedious, and be accused, not for the first
time, of a propensity to lecture a reproach which comes
naturally enough from persons whose conceptions are never too
wide to be expressed within the limits of a sixpenny telegram. I
shall confine myself to correcting a few misapprehensions which
have, I am told, arisen among readers who from inveterate habit
cannot bring the persons and events of a novel into any relation
with the actual conditions of life.

In the first place, then, I desire to say that Mrs. Erskine is
not dead of a broken heart. Erskine and I and our wives are very
much in and out at one another's houses; and I am therefore in a
position to declare that Mrs. Erskine, having escaped by her
marriage from the vile caste in which she was relatively poor and
artificially unhappy and ill-conditioned, is now, as the pretty
wife of an art-critic, relatively rich, as well as pleasant,
active, and in sound health. Her chief trouble, as far as I can
judge, is the impossibility of shaking off her distinguished
relatives, who furtively quit their abject splendor to drop in
upon her for dinner and a little genuine human society much
oftener than is convenient to poor Erskine. She has taken a
patronizing fancy to her father, the Admiral, who accepts her
condescension gratefully as age brings more and more home to him
the futility of his social position. She has also, as might have
been expected, become an extreme advocate of socialism; and
indeed, being in a great hurry for the new order of things, looks
on me as a lukewarm disciple because I do not propose to
interfere with the slowly grinding mill of Evolution, and effect
the change by one tremendous stroke from the united and awakened
people (for such shevainly, alas!believes the proletariat
already to be. As to my own marriage, some have asked
sarcastically whether I ran away again or not; others, whether it
has been a success. These are foolish questions. My marriage has
turned out much as I expected it would. I find that my wife's
views on the subject vary with the circumstances under which they
are expressed.

I have now to make one or two comments on the impressions
conveyed by the style of your narrative. Sufficient prominence
has not, in my opinion, been given to the extraordinary destiny
of my father, the true hero of a nineteenth century romance. I,
who have seen society reluctantly accepting works of genius for
nothing from men of extraordinary gifts, and at the same time
helplessly paying my father millions, and submitting to monstrous
mortgages of its future production, for a few directions as to
the most business-like way of manufacturing and selling cotton,
cannot but wonder, as I prepare my income-tax returns, whether
society was mad to sacrifice thus to him and to me. He was the
man with power to buy, to build, to choose, to endow, to sit on
committees and adjudicate upon designs, to make his own terms for
placing anything on a sound business footing. He was hated,
envied, sneered at for his low origin, reproached for his
ignorance, yet nothing would pay unless he liked or pretended to
like it. I look round at our buildings, our statues, our
pictures, our newspapers, our domestic interiors, our books, our
vehicles, our morals, our manners, our statutes, and our
religion, and I see his hand everywhere, for they were all made
or modified to please him. Those which did not please him failed
commercially: he would not buy them, or sell them, or countenance
them; and except through him, as "master of the industrial
situation," nothing could be bought, or sold, or countenanced.
The landlord could do nothing with his acres except let them to
him; the capitalist's hoard rotted and dwindled until it was lent
to him; the worker's muscles and brain were impotent until sold
to him. What king's son would not exchange with methe son of
the Great Employerthe Merchant Prince? No wonder they proposed
to imprison me for treason when, by applying my inherited
business talent, I put forward a plan for securing his full
services to society for a few hundred a year. But pending the
adoption of my plan, do not describe him contemptuously as a
vulgar tradesman. Industrial kingship, the only real kingship of
our century, was his by divine right of his turn for business;
and I, his son, bid you respect the crown whose revenues I
inherit. If you don't, my friend, your book won't pay.

I hear, with some surprise, that the kindness of my conduct to
Henrietta (my first wife, you recollect) has been called in
question; why, I do not exactly know. Undoubtedly I should not
have married her, but it is waste of time to criticise the
judgment of a young man in love. Since I do not approve of the
usual plan of neglecting and avoiding a spouse without ceasing to
keep up appearances, I cannot for the life of me see what else I
could have done than vanish when I found out my mistake. It is
but a short-sighted policy to wait for the mending of matters
that are bound to get worse. The notion that her death was my
fault is sheer unreason on the face of it; and I need no
exculpation on that score; but I must disclaim the credit of
having borne her death like a philosopher. I ought to have done
so, but the truth is that I was greatly affected at the moment,
and the proof of it is that I and Jansenius (the only other
person who cared) behaved in a most unbecoming fashion, as men
invariably do when they are really upset. Perfect propriety at a
death is seldom achieved except by the undertaker, who has the
advantage of being free from emotion.

Your rigmarole (if you will excuse the word) about the tombstone
gives quite a wrong idea of my attitude on that occasion. I
stayed away from the funeral for reasons which are, I should
think, sufficiently obvious and natural, but which you somehow
seem to have missed. Granted that my fancy for Hetty was only a
cloud of illusions, still I could not, within a few days of her
sudden death, go in cold blood to take part in a grotesque and
heathenish mummery over her coffin. I should have broken out and
strangled somebody. But on every other point Iweakly
enoughsacrificed my own feelings to those of Jansenius. I let
him have his funeral, though I object to funerals and to the
practice of sepulture. I consented to a monument, although there
is, to me, no more bitterly ridiculous outcome of human vanity
than the blocks raised to tell posterity that John Smith, or Jane
Jackson, late of this parish, was born, lived, and died worth
enough money to pay a mason to distinguish their bones from those
of the unrecorded millions. To gratify Jansenius I waived this
objection, and only interfered to save him from being fleeced and
fooled by an unnecessary West End middleman, who, as likely as
not, would have eventually employed the very man to whom I gave
the job. Even the epitaph was not mine. If I had had my way I
should have written: "HENRIETTA JANSENIUS WAS BORN ON SUCH A
DATE, MARRIED A MAN NAMED TREFUSIS, AND DIED ON SUCH ANOTHER
DATE; AND NOW WHAT DOES IT MATTER WHETHER SHE DID OR NOT?" The
whole notion conveyed in the book that I rode rough-shod over
everybody in the affair, and only consulted my own feelings, is
the very reverse of the truth.

As to the tomfoolery down at Brandon's, which ended in Erskine
and myself marrying the young lady visitors there, I can only
congratulate you on the determination with which you have striven
to make something like a romance out of such very thin material.
I cannot say that I remember it all exactly as you have described
it; my wife declares flatly there is not a word of truth in it as
far as she is concerned, and Mrs. Erskine steadily refuses to
read the book.

On one point I must acknowledge that you have proved yourself a
master of the art of fiction. What Hetty and I said to one
another that day when she came upon me in the shrubbery at Alton
College was known only to us two. She never told it to anyone,
and I soon forgot it. All due honor, therefore, to the ingenuity
with which you have filled the hiatus, and shown the state of
affairs between us by a discourse on " surplus value," cribbed
from an imperfect report of one of my public lectures, and from
the pages of Karl Marx! If you were an economist I should condemn
you for confusing economic with ethical considerations, and for
your uncertainty as to the function which my father got his start
by performing. But as you are only a novelist, I compliment you
heartily on your clever little pasticcio, adding, however, that
as an account of what actually passed between myself and Hetty,
it is the wildest romance ever penned. Wickens's boy was far
nearer the mark.

In conclusion, allow me to express my regret that you can find no
better employment for your talent than the writing of novels. The
first literary result of the foundation of our industrial system
upon the profits of piracy and slave-trading was Shakspere. It is
our misfortune that the sordid misery and hopeless horror of his
view of man's destiny is still so appropriate to English society
that we even to-day regard him as not for an age, but for all
time. But the poetry of despair will not outlive despair itself.
Your nineteenth century novelists are only the tail of Shakspere.
Don't tie yourself to it: it is fast wriggling into oblivion.